Traditional music in Ethiopia which is played with old instruments dates back to thousands of years and can more or less be traced back to the emergence of the most famous Ethiopian traditional church musician known as Yared. He invented uniquely religious tunes and notes that were long used and still are used in church rhythms and chants.
Another current of Ethiopian traditional music is what we may call secular type of music which is played with traditional musical instruments by shepherds and Azmaris or ambulatory musicians who roam from one place to another often around alehouses to play for the public in exchange for monetary gratifications or rewards.
The Azmaris are nowadays relegated to the margins of Ethiopian traditional music although some of them are still visible in popular restaurants and whisky joints where middle-class audience prefer to exchange lyrics with the “Azmaris” who play it on their kirars or string instruments shaping them into melodies that laud the physical appearance or the wealth and social standings of the respectable members of the elite whisky drinkers.
Ethiopia’s isolation from the rest of the world as it was long forgotten by the outside world as it forgot the world beyond its impressive mountain ranges. The 20th century opened up new horizons for modernization in almost all walks of life particularly in arts and literature. The old music was giving way to the new which is dubbed “modern” although the two still coexist in an atmosphere of unequal competition. Traditional music has hardly witnessed modernization in the sense of revolutionizing the traditional instruments while the modern is winning over the new generation of musicians and continues to do so as triggered by the ever-expanding technological revolution in electronic instruments.
Not only foreign instruments but also foreign genres of music made their way into the country largely in the 1960s at a time when Blues, Jazz, and Rock music were raging in the West and the United States in particular. Although it may be difficult to give an exact date or year for the introduction of Western or modern music, the process was unstoppable once it was introduced together with the changes in, music recording and playing. many Ethiopian modern musicians such as the late Alemayehu Eshete, (dubbed the ‘Ethiopian Elvis Presley’, in particular, are the products of that period, they had tremendous staying power in the sense that they have been playing the new tunes for over half a century long after most of the Western musicians were gone.
The process of importing Western music and blending it with local or traditional music has gone beyond the end of the 20th century when new styles raged in the United States, styles that are associated with youth rebellion and disenchantment with the consumer society and new Black Consciousness, with Hispanic and Caribbean mix. The process lending the foreign and local music was a kind of two way traffic as it was assisted by growing cultural exchange between the West and African musicians who tried to adopt the new trends to their local conditions and traditions. This was the case of Reggae Rap and Hip-Hop genres of music that came late in Ethiopia but was popular in other parts of Africa starting from the 1970s.
Foreign and mainly Western music genres started to enter the Ethiopian music scene a long time ago, but the 20th century has witnessed what is often called the modernization of Ethiopian music which consisted mainly of the introduction of foreign musical instruments to play or produce local melodies typical of traditional music.
This instrumental blending may be a new phenomenon while Ethiopian melodies, rhymes and themes remained more or less untouched by this transformation. Old themes of courage, beauty, human frailties, love and disappointment are repeatedly picked up by vocalists and writers of lyrics in Ethiopian music while the composers struggle to produce something that is appealing beyond the generation gap.
If we take Hip Hop for instance, is a genre of music most often characterized by a strong rhythmic beat and a rapping vocal track. The genre originated in New York City in the 1970s as a cultural exchange among the Black and Hispanic and Caribbean youth and has grown into one of the most consumed genres of music in the United States. Typically, hip hop music consists of rhythmic use of techniques like assonance or poetry, alliteration, and rhyme.
When it comes to Ethiopia and adopting local music traditions, hip-hop does not lose its basic characteristics while some local instruments like Kirar and drums are blended with it to give it a local feature while the basics of hip-hop remain the same as they are in New York, London or Hong Kong among the youth, irrespective of color or race. Hip hop was first a black/ Hispanic music but later on spread throughout the world and was adopted by blacks in the Caribbean, Africa and other countries where blacks are not the majority populations. It is increasingly becoming the music of protest with strong and political statements contained in their lyrics.
In what we may call “Ethiopian hip hop, two figures have emerged among the ones who started or adopted the genre to local conditions. There were even disputed as to who introduced hip hop first, Lij Michael or his presumed rival, Tedyo. This was like the dispute b between west-coasters and east-coasters in the United States that allegedly led to the assassination of the legendary Tupac Shakur, who was a global hip hop star, “who died on 13 September 1996 of gunshot wounds suffered in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting.”
The dispute between Lij Michael and “Tedyo” had something akin to the Tupac Shakur’s disputes with his opponents and his tragic end. However, the dispute between the two Ethiopian hip hop singers was amicably settled. Thank God they did not imitate the life of tragic artists. This was in fact a pointless dispute from the beginning since what matters in music or in arts in general is who plays well not who played it for the first time since it is an adoption and not an original invention. This is also what makes this kind of dispute all the more ridiculous.
The absence of music critics in our country might have caused disputes to flare up from time to time among musicians to time but also to the plagiarism that is rampant among the music industry insiders. There is too much repetition of old songs between the original by old vocalists that the borderline between the original inventors of the lyrics in particular and the “adapters” is more often than not blurred. In their haste for recognition, younger vocalists and musicians have repeatedly transgressed the boundaries between the old and the new leading to public and legal disputes that have not settled the issue.
Musical criticism is “a branch of philosophical aesthetics concerned with making judgments about composition or performance or both.” The job of music critics could have been immense contribution to the development and quality of Ethiopian music but the absence of this vital tool has led musicians to compose their songs not by objective aesthetic criteria but the way they want them to be by tradition. On the other hand, the absence of music criticism has not enabled the audience to differentiate between good and bad music and make their choice by universally accepted aesthetic evaluation.
What we have in this country are judges at music shows or competitions who evaluate the performance of each vocalist, mostly based on their limited knowledge of aesthetics but mostly on the grounds of their subjective preferences. Even then, they are not passing judgment on the overall composition of the song such as the lyrics or instrumental arrangements. They are only judges of the singer’s voice, style and movements.
For that matter, art criticism in general is underdeveloped or completely absent from the cultural scene. We have no literary critics, music critics or critics of plastic arts. What we have are judges whose subjective opinions may or may not be relevant compared to genuine aesthetic evaluation or criticism. Ethiopians love music but there is no guides who could tell them how to love and which art or artistic product to love so that their appreciation and enjoyment could be based on scientific criteria and not on the opinions of self-styled artistic experts.
Music is one of the most sophisticated art forms and whenever our artists adapt foreign genres they should do so on a deep understanding or knowledge of the art and science of music. “Music critics use their expertise to offer critical analysis of various aspects of music, such as melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, lyrics and production. They provide an objective assessment of the quality and artistic merit of a piece of music, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses.”
Coming back to the adaptation of modern hip hop music to Ethiopian artistic conditions, I would say that Lij Michael is the better of the two disputants in blending hip hop with local music to a very moving effect. Lij Michael, or his producer, has also blended local and foreign music in such numbers like “Eshururu” where an accordion plays at the background and gives the tune a highly local or traditional aspect. That particular number is an adaptation of old melodies as it touches upon love, in the Ethiopian context and some of the lyrics are also repetitions of traditional local vibes. By the way, most of Lij Michael’s songs tend to blend not only the music but also play old and popular lyrics by adapting to hip-hop genre. However, as we said above to have an objective and neutral evaluation of Lij Michael’s hip-hop adaptation one should refer to knowledgeable music critics.
Unfortunately, we do not have such professionals who could direct us in matters of music appreciation. what we can say at present is that let everyone who has the talent to produce music do it as they like and one day, music critics might emerge from somewhere and give us their insights on the music songs, instruments, composition, production of artists. I this way music has grown or developed in other countries. It is also in this way that it might grow in this country and become globally competitive.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 12 JULY 2024
