Popular Music of Ethiopia

Tilahun Gessesse is one of the most famous singers in Ethiopia during the local scene’s Golden Age in the year 1960’s, Ethiopia is one of the musical traditional country, although the famous music is played, recorded and listened to, most of the musicians also sing their traditional songs and most of the people choose to listen to both the famous and the traditional patterns, the long-standing well-known musical tradition in Ethiopia was the brass bands, it is imported from Jerusalem in the way of forty Armenian Orphan (Arba Lijoch) during the time of Haile Selassie. This band arrived in Addis Ababa on September 1924 and became the first official group of Ethiopia. By the end of World War II, large group followed singer, the most prominent groups were the Army Group, Police group and the Imperial Bodyguard group.

source of picture: ethiopiaforums.com

From the year 1950 to 1970, the Ethiopian famous musicians include Bizunesh Bekele, Mahomoud, Ahmed Alemayehu Eshete, Hirut Bekele, Ali Ayalew Mesfin, Kiros Alemayehu, Muluken Melsesse and Tilahun Gessesse while the well-known folk musicians like Alemu Age, Kasa Tessema, Asnaketch Worku, and Mary Armede. Although the popular powerful musicians of that time however, was Ethio jazz inventor Mulatu Astatke and Amha records, Kaifa record and Philips-Ethiopia were prominent Ethiopian record labels during that period, since 1997, the Buda Musique’s Ethipiques series has complied, several of these single and albums are on the compact disc.

In the year 1980, the Derg controlled Ethiopia and migration and became almost the impossible, the musicians during that time include the Ethio Stars, Wallias band and the Roha band, though the composer Neway Debebe was the most famous, he assisted to fame, the use of seminna-werq (wax and the gold, a poetic form of double entendre) in the music (the past it is only used in qine, or poetry) that often enabled the singer to criticize the government without upsetting the censors.