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A few years ago guitarist Terrie Ex started releasing some fine albums of African music on his Terp label, including the first record by Congo’s Konono No. 1, the Malian kora player Djibril Diabate, and an astonishing double-CD (packaged in an extravagant book) by the Eritrean krar player and singer Tsehaytu Beraki. On the Beraki CD as well as last year’s eponymous disc by Ethiopian vocalist Mohammed “Jimmy” Mohammed, various members of the Ex and their associates—drummers Han Bennink and Michael Vatcher and bassist Massimo Zu—made cameos, blending in and strengthening rather than forcing their wills on traditional sounds. The entire band is featured on the recent Moa Anbessa, playing behind Getetchew Merkuria, a brilliant Ethiopian saxophonist they discovered through Negus of Ethiopian Sax, a set of music from 1972 released as volume 14 of the invaluable Ethiopiques series.
Because the Ex have always played loosey-goosey with conventional tonality, Merkuria is free to stick to the pentatonic scales used in Ethiopia, and his haunting microtones never collide with the band’s fierce rhythmic attack. The Ethiopian classic “Musicawi Silt”—originally recorded as “Muzicawi Silt” by the Wallias Band, and included on Ethiopiques 13, Ethiopian Groove—receives a particularly powerful reading, with a loose, sideways funk groove propelled by nasty scratch patterns (a la Andy Gill of Gang of Four) sculpted by guitarists Andy and Terrie. Ex vocalist GW Sok adds original lyrics to a few songs, delivering them in his usual hectoring style, but he never really gets in the way.
