REDISCOVERED
Uncovering the underrated and overlooked
IBEX BAND
Stereo Instrumental Music MUZIKAWI
8/10
A rare recording from the Ethio-jazz septet
IN 1924, the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie was on a diplomatic visit to Jerusalem, where he chanced upon a 40-piece brass band in the city’s Armenian quarter. Learning that they were all orphans of the Armenian genocide, he decided to adopt them, bringing the young musicians to Addis Ababa to work as his Royal Imperial Brass Band. Over the coming decades, this band started to refashion Ethiopian music: refracting the nation’s ancient pentatonic scales through an orchestral prism, eventually giving birth to the genre now known as “Ethio-jazz”.