59 f T
he previous year, the group had been invited by Francis Falceto to participate in the capital’s Festival Of Ethiopian Music. They played in several venues, from the Alliance Française to a suburban club in Bolé to a Sheraton Hotel. Then they discovered the Fendika club, man- aged by the dancer Melaku Belaye, where a lot of Asmari musicians gravitate to. “We were in a complete state of trance”, remembers Raphael, really impressed that the Ethiopian musicians were willing to stick with a group of oddballs who only knew about five or six standards…” On that occasion they met Endres Hassan, player of the massenqo (one-string violin). The latter joined them during the tour in South Africa and has since become a privi- leged guest of the group.
In general, “For us, the difficulty con- sisted of finding our own way in a differ- ent culture, to understand the essence. Sometimes one person translates the words to a song for me, then I discuss it with someone else who then gives me another version!” To better smell and feel the minds of these Ethiopian musicians, the Genevois avoided the traps. Thus, they chose the instrumental path in order not to become “a simple backing band who pounded behind an Ethiopian singer.”
Today, with four years of practice and two trips to Africa behind them, the group feel ready to take on the challenge. On their new album Mercato, the Swiss resi- dent Ethiopian singer Bethlehem Dag- nachew guests on a track. Other projects with singers are in preparation. As with other tracks on the disc, they were select- ed based on tapes that the group bought heavily during their Ethiopian trip, espe- cially in Mercato, the large market in Addis Ababa. After absorbing the standards of the golden age of Ethiopian music, the group are also now passionate about music from the 1980s and traditional music
too. Even via tracks with a rudimentary band or with the synthesisers that are de rigueur today, the musicians have discov- ered melodious pearls by Rahel Yohannes, Marta Ashagani or Hammelmat Abaté.
The tiger also always falls back on its feet, sometimes without even realising it. The Swiss love the track Lale Lale, whose melody was inspired by a few piano notes heard at the turn of the B-side of a cas- sette, only for them to discover that this little melody is originally a piece by Mah- moud Ahmed. “We navigated both in the tradition and in the modern arena, popu- lar and passionate… We could arrive at a piece of Ethiopian progressive rock,” sum- marised percussionist Luc Détraz, who uses his sticks on a set of African, Thai and Indi- an drums. Exploratory, pleasurable, this first CD demonstrates that Geneva’s com- panions are still angry, still inventive.
After Cape Town, the Imperial Tiger Orchestra left for Zimbabwe, to Harare, where they played in Club Mannenberg in front of an audience that included a lot of Ethiopians, among them the whole of the Ethiopian Embassy! The next day, they hung out with musicians from all over. After another flight, heading to Maputo, they took on Mozambique, where the group landed in “a decomposing Africa”, a month after violent riots triggered by the excessive rise in the price of bread. Returning to Johannesburg and then to Durban, the group finished their tour in triumph at the Poetry Africa of Durban. “People as important as the Jamaican poet Mutabaruka attended this performance. The public was very warm. During the sets by the poets, they reacted loudly to certain stanzas. When we went up on stage, the audience stayed completely dumbfounded during the whole of the first piece. We were paralysed. Then it started, everyone began to jump and shout. Watch the videos on YouTube, it’s impressive.”
I
mperial Tiger Orchestra grew from this African experience. The sounds they heard, shared, and explored were absorbed as, back in the rehearsal room, they prepared for the tour to accompany the release of Mer- cato. The group, permanently in a state of evolution, now also have a passion for Sudanese music and the traditional Ethiopian repertoire. “Going there was like submerging ourselves in a bath of African music. The other day, we made a loop of marrabenta [urban music from Mozambique] so that we could interpret a Sudanese track.”
“It’s really bizarre, new and honestly exciting”, concludes Raphael. There’s no doubt that the tiger is ready to bite.
myspace.com/imperialtigerorchestra This piece was first published in Vibra-
tions. Thanks to Cathia Randrianarivo for translation. Hear Imperial Tiger Orchestra on the fRoots 36 compilation.
Win! Cecil Sharp Project CD/DVDs
Earlier this year, Shrewsbury Folk Festival put a selec- tion of folk musicians from the UK and North America together in a house for a week. Between them, Steve Knightley, Jackie Oates, Andy Cutting, Caroline Herring, Jim Moray, Patsy Reid, Leonard Podolak and Kathryn Roberts created an amazing selection of original songs and arranged traditional ones, to tell the story of Cecil Sharp and his collecting work. The resulting concerts deservedly received rave reviews. Now there’s soon to be a CD/ DVD set -– the CD of studio recordings of the project and the DVD of one of the live concerts, includ- ing the dances. Courtesy of Shrewsbury Folk Festival (where the project will be performed again over the August bank holiday weekend) we have 10 to win!
All you have to do to be in with a chance is be a current fRoots subscriber and answer the question below. Email your answers to
comps@frootsmag.com with ‘Cecil Sharp Comp’ in the subject line, to reach here by 30th September. Don’t forget to give us your name and address including postcode.
Q: Who was Cecil Sharp’s assistant on his 1916 collect- ing trip in Appalachia.
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Photo: Supapix
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