Badume's Band & Selamnesh Zéméné

Ethiopian groove

That Ethiopian music is perhaps the most swinging music on the planet – certainly live – is something you don’t have to tell filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (Broken Flowers) or our very own The Ex. Badume’s Band from Brittany has also been pumping out Abessinian grooves for many years. The band has successfully collaborated with legendary Ethiopian singers such as Alemayehu Eshete and Mahmoud Ahmed (at Music Meeting Festival in 2005).

Good old times

In the capital Addis Abeba the band members met the Azmari singer and dynamo Selamnesh Zéméné, and together they recorded an album in 2011. Now comes a follow-up: ‘Yaho Bele’ (Say Yeah), recorded with Zéméné, who’s also travelling to Nijmegen. The record and live show evoke fine memories of the golden age of Ethiopian music, the 1960s and 1970s, when ‘Swinging Addis’ was a hotspot. 

The rockers of Badume’s Band – Rudy Blas is the current guitarist in the progressive French rock band Magma, another familiar face at Music Meeting – throw in drums, edgy rock guitars, a hallucinating organ and some electronica. Trance to dance to, raw and exciting, to be found under: (éthio)groove.

Line-up

Selamnesh Zéméné – Vocals

Olivier Guénégo – Keyboards

Rudy Blas – Guitar

Stéphane Rama – Bass

Antonin Volson – Drums