Jawa Jawa - Ethio-groove band from Paris - Akale Wube

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It is an improbable story: one that reunites, a group of young Parisians with the Swingin' Addis sounds of the seventies. In October 2008, five musicians got together on a wild project: to delve into the repertoire of the Ethiopian golden age, as defined by the producer Francis Falceto, to whom we owe the series of reissues “Ethiopiques”. “The idea was to transcribe songs from this period and rearrange them to the sound of our times. First off, it eliminated the need to write songs that risked falling into ethio-jazz clichés.

The aim was not to bring about some artistic revolution through our work but simply to give and take pleasure by performing this music!” Through this retro-futuristic alchemy, the Akalé Wubé quintet was born: a curious name borrowed from a song by the great saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya, a bit of an old-fashioned expression which can by translated as “my beautiful” in Amharic, a poetic metaphor which also means “beauty of the soul”.

 “Since our very first concert in December 2008 we were surprised by the audience’s enthusiasm.” Since then, Akalé Wubé have played more than forty concerts, including a residency at the Lavoir Moderne Parisien and a tour around Morocco. A year later, they were finally ready to record their debut album. It took them four live sessions in the famous “Cold Rooms” on the bank of the river Seine, in order to capture the warmth and fervor of an acoustic and organic sound.