{"id":1359,"date":"2008-04-13T22:19:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-14T02:19:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-04-15T11:25:48","modified_gmt":"2008-04-15T11:25:48","slug":"mahmoud-ahmed-gets-me-jumping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/mahmoud-ahmed-gets-me-jumping\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahmoud Ahmed Gets Me Jumping!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/v7Pod6r6KQI?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nAs some of you may recall, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php?title=downloads_to_spare_try_the_ethiopiques_s&amp;more=1&amp;c=1&amp;tb=1&amp;pb=1\" title=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php?title=downloads_to_spare_try_the_ethiopiques_s&amp;more=1&amp;c=1&amp;tb=1&amp;pb=1\">sometime last sunmer I discovered a series available through <strong>eMusic<\/strong> called <em>Ethiopiques<\/em><\/a>, covering Ethiopian pop and folk music from the &#8217;60s through the mid-70s. Or some timeframe like that. I&#8217;m not good with dates and remembering the historical events within which this collection was framed. What&#8217;s important to me is how quickly I took to large swaths of whatever I downloaded from this 20-plus-CD set. I&#8217;m usually not that apt to dig &#8220;world music,&#8221; but this Ethiopian stuff had a lot going for it. Despite the fact that I couldn&#8217;t understand a word of any of the singers I&#8217;d been sampling, the recordings spoke to me. It was refreshing. I felt unusually open minded while, at the same time, I felt like I&#8217;d been listening to a sound that my soul had been calling for since I was a boy trying to float beyond all the crap and confusion of my world.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly after stumbling across this stuff I was reminded that this was some of the music <strong>Jeffrey Wright<\/strong>&#8216;s character in <em>Broken Flowers<\/em> would play <strong>Bill Murray<\/strong>&#8216;s character. Early in the film, if memory serves, these Ethiopian tunes created a cool, hip, slightly familiar, slightly exotic vibe. As I continued downloading this stuff, I felt the presence of Wright&#8217;s character as well as the presence of so many real-life friends over the years who&#8217;d turned me onto something new yet surprisingly familiar. <\/p>\n<p>As I began digging deeper into these new sounds I started trying to place names with my favorite songs. It&#8217;s a difficult task. The Ethiopian language frequently does not order letters in ways English speakers are accustomed to seeing. Luckily the artist whose music first grabbed my attention had perhaps the easiest name to remember: <strong>Mahmoud Ahmed<\/strong>. You may recall the following song, from my first post on my Ethiopian journey.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/Mahmoud_Ahmed-Almaz_Men_Eda_New.mp3\" title=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/Mahmoud_Ahmed-Almaz_Men_Eda_New.mp3\"><strong>Mahmoud Ahmed, &#8220;Almaz Men Eda New&#8221;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Man, this Mahmoud Ahmed gets me jumping!<\/em> I love the repetition and the tumbling percussion. I love the organ drones, like something out of &#8220;Tomorrow Never Knows&#8221;. I love the horn parts, the way they stagger in and out of the songs. I love Ahmed&#8217;s urgent, insistent vocal delivery, a delivery that, refreshingly, avoids any of the threatening, boasting, or otherwise macho aspects of the great <strong>James Brown<\/strong> or <strong>Chuck D<\/strong>. Ahmed&#8217;s sound is joyous, playful,  obsessive, and ultimately peaceful. <\/p>\n<p><ins><small><em>More tracks after the jump!<\/em><\/small><\/ins><br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/svRyb-Il5d0?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nOf course, I don&#8217;t have a clue what &#8220;Almaz Men Eda New&#8221; is about. For all I know he&#8217;s joyously asking us to take a machete to a colonel&#8217;s head. When this stuff plays, my feet and fingers are tapping, my breathing quickens, and my heart races. It&#8217;s music that opens the gates for my hyperactive inner child to run free, right up there with the best stuff on XTC&#8217;s <em>English Settlement<\/em>, Pere Ubu&#8217;s <em>Dub Housing<\/em>, Captain Beefheart&#8217;s <em>Bat Chain Puller<\/em>, Ornette Coleman&#8217;s <em>Dancing in Your Head<\/em>, and Terry Riley&#8217;s <em>A Rainbow in Curved Air<\/em>. There are times for letting one&#8217;s hair down, and there are times for letting one&#8217;s hair stand on end. The music of Mahmoud Ahmed puts sets my hair on end. <\/p>\n<p>Here are a few more tracks I&#8217;ve been digging. Even the mellower tracks <em>vibrate<\/em>, or <em>buzz<\/em>! Some day I&#8217;ll look up biographical information on this guy, but he&#8217;s already a soul I feel I know.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/Mahmoud_Ahmed_Ethiopiques_V6_Almaz_Asha_Gedawo.mp3\" title=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/Mahmoud_Ahmed_Ethiopiques_V6_Almaz_Asha_Gedawo.mp3\"><strong>Mahmoud Ahmed, &#8220;Gedawo&#8221;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/Mahmoud_Ahmed_Ethiopiques_V7_Erh_Mhla_Mhla_Tezeta.mp3\" title=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/Mahmoud_Ahmed_Ethiopiques_V7_Erh_Mhla_Mhla_Tezeta.mp3\"><strong>Mahmoud Ahmed, &#8220;Tezeta&#8221;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/Mahmoud_Ahmed_Ethiopiques_V7_Erh_Mhla_Mhla_Bhmen_Shbhb_Letlash.mp3\" title=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/Mahmoud_Ahmed_Ethiopiques_V7_Erh_Mhla_Mhla_Bhmen_Shbhb_Letlash.mp3\"><strong>Mahmoud Ahmed, &#8220;Bhmen Shbhb&#8221;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/Mahmoud_Ahmed_Ethiopiques_V7_Erh_Mhla_Mhla_Ebakesh_Tarhqign.mp3\" title=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/RockTownHall\/Mahmoud_Ahmed_Ethiopiques_V7_Erh_Mhla_Mhla_Ebakesh_Tarhqign.mp3\"><strong>Mahmoud Ahmed, &#8220;Tarhqign&#8221;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As some of you may recall, sometime last sunmer I discovered a series available through eMusic called Ethiopiques, covering Ethiopian pop and folk music from the &#8217;60s through the mid-70s. Or some timeframe like that. I&#8217;m not good with dates and remembering the historical events within which this collection was framed. What&#8217;s important to me <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/mahmoud-ahmed-gets-me-jumping\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}