Original subtitles

All the books here are related to Ethiopia.

As well as downstairs.

Francis Falceto, musicologist

I love this. This kind of cover is...

That's super rare stuff.

Again by Amha Eshete. They are all my favorites.

For me they are part of my eyes and my memory.

I cherish them, I take an incredible care of them.

I would never play them anymore. They are digitized and I don't touch them.

ETHIOPIQUES REVOLT OF THE SOUL

The love of music has been in me since childhood.

Usually people buy clothing, shoes.

You know, things like that.

The first thing I bought was a record player

from an American guy who was leaving Ethiopia.

Girma Beyene vocalist and composer

Yeah, that was Cole Porter, way back.

That's how it all started.

And this was a very flourishing city, you know.

Just like a modern city.

It was very open. We were able to buy Newsweek and many international papers.

We were able to know about musicians in other countries of the world,

who are great musicians in Africa, in Europe and in America as well.

When you play... Wow !

Then I tried to catch up. We all had drums and tried to play like them.

The night life was great. People were going out

basically seven nights a week.

I had a part-time job at the American Mapping Mission

which gave me a chance to go to Kagnew Station.

US Military Base in Asmara

At Kagnew Station they had an FM radio station.

They had the latest music, James Brown, Elvis Presley.

I was totally fascinated.

And I said to myself, if these things are released in the US,

why aren't they available in Ethiopia ?

I said I have to do something, to give something to these people.

My first order of LPs and 45s from the United States arrived.

Some people thought it was crazy.

But the very very night I had the records come in,

at around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, half the shelves were empty.

After a week the whole shelf was completely empty.

It was an empty store.

I was the first person

who had a music show.

There was no one else.

When the new music came, you just stood there

and listened to all the new songs.

If you couldn't afford it you stood there all day and listened to whatever.

A lot of rock 'n' roll, basically. It was Elvis time.

He was so fast ! He had a lot of collections.

He knew what people wanted.

You know, in life, wanting

always leads you to something else.

I started asking myself

something that I had never thought about before.

I am selling Sudanese records, Italian records,

American, of course, Indian... But there is no Ethiopian music !

I said, what is going on here ?

The emperor was a very powerful person. He was respected.

The security force was tough.

You could've been put in jail and thrown out,

and then be forgotten.

I found out that the emperor issued a decree giving the right of publishing

any record of patriotic associations.

With that decree on hand, most people weren't willing to go along with me.

They were afraid.

Alemayehu told me about an idea to make the first recording.

He wanted me to play music.

How ? How should I do it ?

And Alemayehu said, 'You have to do it.

This is our music and I know you can do it.'

And he convinced me, and then...

I said I will take a chance.

If this is my destiny, to go to jail, let it be.

No way !

Amazingly, there were people interested in having a recording

and let us a studio at the Ministry of Information.

Everyone pushing each other. Saxophone, trumpet,

organ, drums, vocalist. But we made it.

We sent the tape

to the company, a real tape, a master tape.

Then another problem, another obstacle.

This thing would come through customs, and it was an Ethiopian record

written in Amharic and all these people know that you can't record.

That was the final cut-off point

where they could say, 'This is illegal, you can't bring Ethiopian music.'

But amazingly the only thing he asked me was if I can give him a copy.

They could've burned the whole thing and put us in jail.

The whole place, the Piazza, was jammed with people.

People were dancing in the streets and the street was basically blocked !

This is a miracle !

It was... It was a hit !

SOUL MUSIC INVADES ETHIOPIA

DISCOTHEQUE ARRIVES

People were singing, these people are having

the time of their life. Alemayehu was more popular than ever.

Girma was doing well, he was wearing nice shirts, he was driving a nice car.

For about one year I was rich.

I was rich.

From 1969 to 1975

I was able to do about 102 45s

and some 12 or 14 LPs.

Life was great. That is how I remember.

The emperor was getting old. At the station there was fear and happiness.

I was happy that there was going to be a change.

I never thought or I never knew what kind of change was going to come.

We never thought there would be total civil war.

When they said 'Land to the Tiller', it was fine.

When they redistributed property and stuff like that, it was fine.

When they imprisoned the prime minister, it was ok.

The minute they killed the 60 government officials

and buried them in one big hole

that was when I said this was not going to be a good change.

That totally ruined night life.

The final years of my record pressing were done in Athens.

They gave me an exit visa, I went to Athens.

Then my family sent me a telegram saying,

'Don't come back !'

My father was put in jail, the vocalist was put in jail.

The worst thing, they put the guy who was behind the mixer in jail.

He was just trying to adjust the sound.

He was also put in jail.

It was a week, it was two weeks,

three weeks.

Then finally I said, well, I can't stay here because

I wasn't determined to stay. I had only limited amount of money.

So I went to London. My sister was there.

I stayed there another month. Nothing happened, it was getting worse.

Then eventually I went to the States.

The government took all the shops that they had

and sold them out. I lost everything.

This was the end of my era in the Ethiopian music business.

POITIERS, FRANCE

I was part of

a non-profit organisation in the mid 80s,

in Poitiers, France, a small city with 100,000 people.

THE MODERN COMFORT

It was more fun in Poitiers than in Paris.

They were partying all the time, listening to great music,

meeting great musicians. What else ?

And we were in love !

We were very much into experimental stuff.

Noise rock from New York...

We wouldn't mind inviting artists who weren't world famous or rich.

We would just invite only artists we loved.

They invited Sonic Youth for the first time

in France.

And we were crazy about that ! We liked it tremendously !

One day we had a party

and a friend of ours brought an LP.

We sort of saw that we were

music experts a little bit.

We had been listening to a lot of stuff, all kind of things.

And that was absolutely different.

I think this is... Yeah, the first. The moment it starts it's just great.

It was magnificent !

The groove is terrible. Terrible in the sense... gorgeous.

OK, we had never heard that before.

We made a cassette out of this LP which we sent to

friends of ours, music journalists and reviewers.

The following days all of them called us back asking where we got that from.

For the first time in the history of this radio

the audience started to phone us

and ask us what the title of the song they listened a few minutes before was.

From them we had the confirmation that it was unknown.

Immediately we decided to bring this guy in.

This is an old recording, but they put the synthesizer on it.

It's crap, I'm sorry. The original are great, but...

I had never been to Africa.

I knew a lot about African music, but nothing about Ethiopian music.

And then I landed in Addis Abeba.

The Ethiopian don't like strangers that much.

'Why does this white guy want from us ?'

A big ascent started for me.

Body check everywhere you go, either you go to the restaurant or the hotel.

You could not take a walk with a photo camera, a walkman or a recorder.

You would be suspected immediately. Big problem.

He best place to talk to people was in a car, just driving in the city.

We'd just drive. No police would be after us

and listen to what we were doing.

I felt I was in a Stalin paradise.

During this week, I've been tracing Mahmoud Ahmed.

I told him I was French and was coming from France especially to invite him.

'I would be very pleased if you performed in France.'

It was something absolutely unexpected for him.

He knew much better than me that it would be a hell

for the administrative political process.

It was a national sport then

which was how to leave this country.

We went in every official office, at the Ministry of Control,

we went even into barracks to meet the head of the Communist Party.

When I left Ethiopia, I thought maybe it would happen, maybe not.

And, as a matter of fact, very quickly I understood when I was back in France

that this would not happen.

Of course, the recording is rotten. It's too bad, but...

For me, it's proto-punk.

This is '70, '69.

This song was published in December '69, I think, or '70.

By Led Zep.

You can write a paper about Mozart or Elvis Presley.

Everybody will understand what you're talking about.

Because they know about Elvis or Bach or Mozart or whatever.

But if you write about Ethiopian music, how can you describe it ?

So for me it was obvious you had to make the music itself available.

He was like obsessed with Ethiopia and Ethiopian stuff.

We sort of... got separated.

Well, probably we were tired of each other

and I was tired of the Ethiopian obsession.

Fortunately, I came with a lot of documentation

with the posters and the program.

I didn't know this one was big, that one was small.

I bought each and every vinyl I could find.

Suddenly I had a lot of recordings that nobody had.

Through this I understood that it was one label releasing

this music on vinyl, Amha Records.

And the owner of this label, Amha Eshete,

I understood he was in exile in America.

By '86, I flew to Washington, DC.

We met at the Washington, DC airport.

When I thought about that later on, it was a strange place to meet.

He asked me about the music that I had made

while I was in Ethiopia and that he would like to

re-release it.

He was half amazed, half "I can't believe what's going on". Big surprise.

I said to him, 'I am in exile, I am here.

Most of the artists I have recorded are back in Ethiopia.'

I said, 'If I record this,

if I re-release this music, and I am here,

these people will have a bad name for me.

I don't know where some of them are, I don't know if they are alive...

Or whatever.' I said, 'If God willing, if I ever come back to Ethiopia,

then talk about it.'

I understood I could do nothing until the fall of this regime.

WASHINGTON, USA

I was not far from music. I had

the first full-scale Ethiopian restaurant.

He had two, three different night clubs, as far as I understood.

The last one he had was huge. It was

on three, four floors.

He was successful.

I was the first person

who broke the barrier

of a full band to cross the Atlantic,

from a socialist country like Ethiopia

to the United States.

How can you expect

to bring to America from Ethiopia, under the Derg,

a ten-piece band ? It's crazy !

Amha sent me the contract

and then the Derg said, 'No, you can't go to America.'

I said, 'Why ? This is not a political group. These are musicians.

They were adamant that a band from a socialist country

would not go to an imperial state like the United States.

It took me literally

two years to work it out.

And then they said yes. When they say yes, nobody should hear about it.

You have to go secretly. Nobody should hear.

And nobody should accompany you to the airport. You just go. OK !

We went straight to the airport and we were scared

until the plane passed the Ethiopian border.

And then, once we passed the Ethiopian border... we were free.

I was so thrilled !

Oh, yeah, yeah. That was a great time.

This is a place where we can do what we wanna do.

I liked the newspapers, I liked everything.

It had finally happened.

This is something I am really proud of.

Our first show was in...

...in Warren theatre It's one of the most popular

music halls in the United States.

It was not successful.

People literally cried.

Because there was no live music at all.

Completely at all. Nothing.

One year we traveled the United States.

We went from state to state.

That time, no flight. We were driving.

That was the big mistake for the band.

We were not doing good economically.

And Amha was very tired, he had the restaurant.

I was inexperienced about this...

...band working in different places. There was political connotation.

'How can Amha be able to bring this band

unless he had some backing from the government ?'

Some people said, 'These are pro-Derg. Don't go to their shows !'

We were not pro-Derg, we disapprove it.

Everybody just got mad, because there was no money.

Some of us wanted to go and some of us wanted to stay there.

It was not a group thing, it was individual, I'd say.

We gave them everything that we owned.

We didn't come for this, we had that at home.

We came for a different thing.

Girma said, 'I don't want anything. No instrument, no money.'

OK, we said. Me and Girma, we stayed.

That's how the Walias ended. It ended in America.

When it comes to America, it is really hard to play music. Very hard.

To be a professional musician is really really really hard.

You have to choose. You have to play part-time

and do some other job.

Some became taxi drivers, some work

in parking places and...

They got to do what they got to do to live their life.

Michael Alazar, percussionist, Walias band

currently a taxi driver

Melake Gebre, bass player Walias Band

currently bar owner

Moges Habte, saxophone player Walias band

currently a clerk

Girma Beyene, vocalist, composer, Walias, soloist.

has not performed in 20 years

Girma Beyene played

in the clubs for a few years, but then he just stopped.

And I still don't know why.

She was a beautiful lady, he loved her

and we had songs about her. That's why he was hurt when she got sick.

In 1984,

you know, my girl died.

I lost my soul mate, my girlfriend.

I don't know what to say, but...

Then things completely changed.

That's the reason I quit.

From fantasy to reality.

The first time I saw him,

I met him

I had asked around and people would say,

'Yeah, he's here somewhere.' But nobody would tell me where.

And then a friend of mine said, 'You know what ?

He works at this gas station, on this street

crossing this street, you'll find him there.'

I was refilling my car and I went to pay,

and there was Girma Beyene. I couldn't believe my eyes.

I was like, 'Wow !'

There was a change of government. I came back to Ethiopia.

The main reason why I came back

from the United States, after 19 years,

was that memory was with me.

The friendship we had, the love we had with friends.

But when I came back, it was a different story.

The socialist had changed the way people lived.

I had completely forgotten about my initial work with music.

It was my past life.

ARCHIVES

When Francis came to Ethiopia, I was surprised.

After a couple of meetings we sort of agreed that now I am here.

I will keep my word and we can do it.

By '96-'97,

when we retrieved most of the masters of Amha Records,

I was empowered to pick the masters.

My goodness !

Nicest day in my life !

We started from there.

By October 1997,

I would release the very first "Ethiopiques".

He had been working on it for 20 years, I think.

It's been a lot of work really and a lot of...

...obstinacy.

I had no idea at all about how it would be received

by the audience on one hand and the music critics on the other.

I was in an Ethiopian restaurant.

They were playing an incredible music, and I asked the owner who it was.

I was in a cab, in a taxi in Washington.

And I said, 'What is this ? What is this ?!'

There was James Brown in there, there was like this heavy driving funk beats.

I was just blown away by how beautiful the music was.

And it just turned me on completely.

The golden age of Ethiopian music

Ethiopractor

The treasure of Ethiopia

Falceto's odyssey into the Abyssinian groove

It was praised as one of the best releases of '97-'98.

I told a friend of mine about them yesterday, he didn't know about them.

I said, 'You're gonna thank me when you hear these records,

and then you're gonna curse me.

You're gonna want all 32 volumes, 'cause every one is a different story.'

This music was completely lost !

If 'Ethiopiques' had not been started by Francis,

forget it ! Ethiopian music would've been doomed.

The Ethiopian pop star

We've been all over Europe. In Italy, in France.

We've been all over the world.

He's like a father, he's a brother. He is a friend.

Mr. Ethiopiques

I don't think anybody has done

as much as Francis has done to promote Ethiopian music.

That's the way.

I just brought to the light the tip of the iceberg.

It's a musical gold mine.

Ethiopian music is a kind of missing link in the history of African music.

I am glad this missing link is not missing anymore.

Girma is a kind of person...

You have to manage him. Like a baby.

He is not like... He is not a hustler.

Other musicians hustle, they call guys, let's to something together.

Girma is not like that. Girma is a very rare unique character.

I don't know how he got into music.

This is he.

Imagine you had been super famous in your country,

but afterwards it was a...

...an endless fall.

I am trying to...

...to make a comeback.

Not that easy, but I'll do my best.

I am the one who was nagging him every time. 'Please come back, Girma !'

He told me, 'I would go back to music. I have to go back. Please, please !'

I can play better now.

But nobody believes you, though. That's the problem.

I am not really comfortable though.

I think he has it in him now. I think there's so much in his body,

stuffed music

that he wants to put out to the world.

Paris, France

Francis wrote me a letter.

He was talking about Ethiopian music.

And the letter was about the Ethiopian music revival.

I read the thing and then I said, 'What is he talking about ?'

- How are you ? - Good.

- Ça va bien ? - Ça va bien.

How are you doing ?

Completely different arrangement. I don't even know...

I didn't know what it was.

- For real ? - Yeah. It's your song.

- But different though. - Yeah.

- I don't know... - How are you doing ?

Alright.

So we're going to rehearse and record, right ?

- We rehearse a bit and then we record. - Right.

- That's D, right ? - Yeah.

Love is a splendid thing.

Love makes you brave.

I'm kind of scared, but when it comes to her,

you know, I have to obey.

No problem. But no one will touch her though.

I swear. No one.

I'll go first.

And we didn't.

We survived.

Thank you, thank you !

Girma Beyene returned to the scene after an absence of nearly 30 years.

Together with the band Akale Wube,

he recorded the disc "Ethiopiques 30", produced by Francis,

"Mistakes On Purpose".