Africa Calling

Sometime late last year I was at a party in Dublin and got chatting to a businessman called Brody Sweeney [founder of the O'Brien's Sandwich franchise). He was curious about how people made a buck in the Irish music business and he asked me a whole load of questions which I did my best to answer. I told him about the things we’d done with The Stunning and The Walls and our own label, the things we hope to achieve and about things we wish we’d done differently.
About a week later he called me and said that what I had spoken about was invaluable information for young people trying to get a start in the music business and he asked would I be interested in going to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to do a seminar/workshop on the subject.
I had never been to Africa and had often wondered would I ever get there, so understandably I was thrilled and I accepted the invitation willingly.

Connect Ethiopia was set up three years ago by Brody and a solicitor chap called Philip Lee. Basically, their strategy involves concentrating on one particular African country and setting up business links between it and Ireland in an effort to encourage economic activity and thus help them trade their way out of poverty. They are establishing links between Irish and Ethiopian businesses and the resulting sharing of know-how, experience and contacts is enabling Ethiopian businesses to expand and therefore employ staff. They chose Ethiopia as it is relatively politically stable and incorrupt. Moreover, we Irish share their history of famine. As well as that they have a low crime rate and they don’t have a jaundiced view of the white man as an ex-colonial oppressor, mainly because they were never really colonised.
The Ethiopians are a proud and noble people and they are rearing to go. The schools are packed; they grow coffee (it originates from the province of Kaffa); they make textiles, jewellery and, on top of that, they have the most beautiful women of any country I have ever visited, and I’ve been to quite a few. I mentioned at one point that a modeling agency might be a good business idea. I don’t know if anyone took that seriously other than me! However, poverty is everywhere and out of a population of 71 million, 58 million live on less than $1 per day. Ethiopia is about twice the size of France so that gives you some idea of the scale.
We arrived in Addis Ababa on a Tuesday morning and the next day I had about 15 people at my seminar/workshop. They included various musicians, a band manager, a girl from a radio station, a guy who ran a small studio, a music arranger, a beautiful singer (who was the spitting image of Lauryn Hill of the Fugees), the sound engineer for Tedy Afro (a big star in Ethiopia) and a record shop owner. I had been told prior to the seminar that Ethiopians are quite shy and I might have problems getting them to speak up. I had the opposite problem. There were times it got so heated that I was like John Bowman on Questions and Answers. I had to sometimes play them a song to calm them down. They had numerous grievances with the music business in Ethiopia and it took me a couple of hours of just listening to figure out how it worked.
Basically, a band revolves around the singer. It starts and ends with the singer. The singer puts the band together and writes the songs and sometimes even owns all the equipment, amps and instruments. They rehearse and do some weddings and gigs and the singer then decides to do an album. He or she then goes to a studio arranger. This chap then programs all the drums, guitars, basses etc. on a computer or keyboard workstation and the singer warbles over the top. The musicians don’t get invited along as they would need to be paid and there just isn’t enough money to do that. So, as you can well imagine it sounds like tinny crap from the early 80’s. Worse actually.
Then the singer takes his/her album to a record store. The record shop owner has a listen to the CD and if he likes it he makes an offer. It could be a couple of hundred dollars or more depending on whether the singer is a complete unknown. The record shop then manufacture the album and advertise it and sell as many as they can, but the singer doesn’t get any further payment, just that one-off fee. I told a musician friend of mine here about it and he said, “Sure it’s just like that in Ireland”. Well, interestingly enough, it’s not far off it, the way the business is going.
A chap called Kibret, whose studio I visited, pointed to a drum-kit in the corner and said it hadn’t been played in 15 years. He said he wished it were like in the old days when bands came in and recorded real instruments. He said that the singer calls the shots now and wants everything programmed to avoid having to pay musicians. Tedy Afro’s sound engineer also complained about the low standards of production in music and said they needed a decent studio in Addis. And the band manager complained that musicians were lazy and showed no incentive. I pointed out to him that if I was a great drummer playing in a good band and then heard my band’s single on the radio and there was a crap electronic drum-kit playing instead of me, then I’d be exactly the same. The girl from the radio station complained that all new Ethiopian music sounds the same - now she understood why. I presented an 8-track digital recorder and a set of microphones (kindly donated by Musicmaker) to a music collective, who were over the moon. They’ll hopefully be sending me some recordings soon. Big Bear Audio gave me a good studio condenser mic, which I gave to Kibret for his studio. He had been recording all his vocals on a cheap Chinese one, so he couldn’t wait to try it out.
On the final night of my brief visit to Addis, One Vibe, a reggae band invited me to their gig in the Harlem Jazz Club and asked me to play a few songs. The whole Connect Ethiopia posse came along and the place was thronged with an eclectic mix of Irish, Ethiopians and Rastafarians. One Vibe were amazing and had the whole place jumping, with a succession of singers taking the microphone. I was nervous about playing solo as I didn’t want everyone to leave the dancefloor so I tore in Johnny Cash and June Carter’s ‘Jackson’. One by one the musicians started to tentatively amble onstage and join in. None of them seemed to play anything other than reggae and the resulting mix was this incredible mutant form of music that had the dancefloor hopping. I played ‘To The Bright And Shining Sun’ and an old Coco Taylor R&B hit ‘Wang Dang Doodle’ and then lashed out ‘Brewing Up A Storm’ for good measure. It was the most amazing version I’ve ever done of that song, with a reggae rhythm section and reggae-style organ. It was like Prince Buster meets the Monkees, if you can imagine that. Later, a young female singer with the most amazing voice joined them onstage. I joined her for a duet and we sang Dennis Brown’s ‘Money In My Pocket’ followed by a song in Ethiopian that I didn’t know, so I sang Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s ‘Ain’t no Mountain High Enough’ in response to her. The melody and meter of the lyrics fitted perfectly and the result was one of those “hair on the back of the head” moments that I will never forget.
That night reminded me what making music is all about and the language that exists between musicians when they are totally ego-less and reading each other’s minds. It was a whole other level of experience. We all said our goodbyes at around 4am and after the hug-fest the Irish posse handed the band the proceeds of a whip around they had made. The band was gob-smacked as they were getting paid peanuts for the gig and there was enough cash in the hat to buy a guitar amp or an instrument or whatever. And people wonder why the Irish are so popular abroad? It’s that big Irish beating heart and that big Irish pumping soul.

WHERE TO EAT:
The Crown Hotel has a terrific traditional music and dance show and a buffet meal. The Hilton, where we stayed, was also good for food.

TOP TIP FOR A DRINK:
I’d recommend the Harlem Jazz Club for a night out. The building was supposed to be getting demolished to make room for a hotel but apparently they’re moving to a new location. Otherwise the Abysinnian Bar for music and dance.

WHERE TO STAY:
Well we stayed in the Ghion in Addis which has beautiful gardens but rooms are pretty basic. When the showers didn’t work we moved to the Hilton.

Check out www.connectethiopia.com, and www.thewalls.ie