It’s been a number of days since my last post, due to an absence of internet access, so I’ll be playing a bit of catch up now.  There’s certainly not been a lack of things to post about though.  On the 7^th everyone involved with the “Music Without Boundaries” festival had to be at the Addis Ababa airport at 6am in order to be on an 8am flight.  Even after passing through security, there’s more security to go through.  The flight itself was only about a half hour, but the act of traveling took up most of the day.  After landing in Dire Dawa, which is in the Eastern lowlands of Ethiopia, we drove on a winding road up into the highlands towards the ancient city of Harar.  The drive was simply beautiful.  We saw more than a couple of camels, Harari women in bright robes, busy market places selling chat (a locally grown leaf that’s a stimulant chewed by many local folks), and giant panoramas of the Eastern Ethiopian desert.  After checking into our hotel, we were driven to one of the gates of the old walled in city to watch locals feed wild hyenas by hand!  This is a practice that’s been going on for centuries.  At one point the fellow feeding them dangled a piece of meat from his mouth for one of them.  It was pretty amazing.  After a large group dinner, we had an impromptu jam session with the musicians from the other groups back in our hotel room, passing a bottle of Johnny Walker Black, the preferred Ethiopian liquor it would seem.  A little too much A minor going on, but a good time was had by all.

While listing the artists traveling with us, I forgot to mention Kade, an Ethiopian ex-patriot based out of Toronto.  He’s a very beautiful singer, and speaks better Amharic better than any of us, (it’s taken me a week to be able to thank people for my beer without screwing it up!) which has been a saving grace for all of us on numerous occasions.  I still don’t know Elias’ last name, but hip-hop fans might know him as “Burnt Face.”  I’ve taken to calling him “Professor Burnt Face,” because his knowledge of history, physics, and other subjects I’m sure, is expansive and inspiring.  We’re also now accompanied by Brendan and Arian, two film- makers planning to make a documentary on our travels.  I can’t wait to see some of the footage they’ve been collecting.

The people in Harar are poor by American standards, the power goes out intermittently, the plumbing won’t allow the flushing of toilet paper…but much of the desperation that I felt in the urban environment of Addis is absent there.  It feels more like a town of people living much as they have for ages, and there’s not the blatant class divide as in the city.  There is warmth and welcoming coming from the people there that exceeded even those in Addis.  We were all a little disappointed that this was to be such a brief stay.

May 8,

Our first and only full day in Harar, we had a quick breakfast and headed to the town square where we were to be playing that night.  When we got there, the elders of the town were performing sacred music.  First all the men, and then all the grandmothers got up and sang in a call-and-response fashion over simple but grooving drum patterns.  It was incredibly beautiful and moving.  Much of their sounds reminded me of Afghani music that I’ve heard, which makes sense.  For centuries, the town of Harar was a center of trade between Africa, India, and the Middle East.  Some of the people looked quite Indian, and others looked more Arabic.  While most of the country is predominantly Orthodox Christian, there is a larger percentage of Muslims in Harar, and a tradition of Islamic scholarship.

After lunch we had an epic wait for our sound-check, and in fact, never got one.  Townspeople were waiting around with us though, including a large number of kids.  This became for me the highlight of our visit.  Elias started playing with the kids, taking pictures of them and letting them take pictures also.  Whenever they saw themselves back in one of the pictures, they would squeal and laugh in such a way that I’d have to smile all the way down to my belly.  Eventually I took out my trumpet, which proved to be a huge hit.  All the kids wanted to try it, and a couple of them actually got a pretty nice sound.

At one point the collective got a short walking tour through the old town, which was completely walled in around 1550 AD, originally in response to attacks from the nomadic Oromo, who had migrated up from what is now Kenya.   The Oromo are actually now the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, so I guess those walls didn’t really do the trick in the end!  Walking those narrow alleyways was like going back in time.  Because it was Sunday, the markets were all closed unfortunately.  We did see a lot more kids who followed us around until we were quite the entourage, and a personal highlight was seeing a monkey chewing chat.  When I told a local about that later, he declared, “I know that monkey!”

That night, Meklit’s band finally got to play at the end of a very long program, which had started over two hours late.  This seemed to be the way things were going with the festival, long waits for very short amounts of playing time.  There’d been problems in dealing with the festival folks all along, but now they were beginning to intensify.  We played for about 10 minutes, but while many folks who had to work the next day were leaving while we stepped onto the stage, those who stayed seemed to really get a kick out of our set, especially when we played Abbay Mado, which everyone in Ethiopia knows and can sing along to.  By the time we were done, there was only one restaurant left open.  We were all pretty fried, and a little frustrated.  We walked straight back to our hotel afterwards, sticking close together because the hyenas roam the town’s streets at night.

May 9

Most of the day was spent getting back to Addis.  This time, some of us were put up at the Hilton, while some of us from the collective suddenly had to find their own lodgings.  Tensions between the collective and the festival were beginning to come to a boil.  I would leave this back-story out altogether, but it’s all being captured by the film-makers, and it’s all going to become part of the documentary, so I guess I might as well tell the whole story to the best of my understanding.  What I had hoped would be a festival which allowed for an exchange between musicians from around the world with Ethiopian artists, was in fact being revealed as a platform for promoting non-Ethiopian music to Ethiopians.  The actual Ethiopian diaspora artists, the front-people forming the collective, had consistently felt disrespected and secondary to the European artists.  As something of a third party, this definitely seems to be the case to me.  The most curious thing to me is that the office of “Cultural Preservation” for Ethiopia is run out of the German consulate, by a German!  When one of our collective asked her how this festival was to help preserve Ethiopian culture, she declared, “I don’t have to answer that, we’re not having that conversation!”  So larger global issues of cultural imperialism seem to suddenly be represented in a microcosm, directly affecting our decision-making and day-to-day experience.

Being at the Hilton after two nights in Harar is an intense contrast!  The food is suddenly at prices comparable to back in the U.S., and there’s nothing else within walking distance.  There’s a warm pool, hot tub, steam bath, gym, (it does feel really good to be able to get back to the gym!), and a metal-detector/security clearance at the front door.  The view from our balcony pretty much sums it up; you can see the pool, some clay tennis courts that are constantly being watered, with a sign posted by a local bank reading “Be a Winner.”  At the edge of the clay courts is a 20-foot high brick wall with barbed wire at the top, and on the other side, a shantytown.

May 10

Gym, pool, practicing on the balcony… it’s been a pretty mellow and luxurious day.  The German woman from the festival came for a meeting with the leaders from the collective, and it didn’t go well at all.  I was sitting a ways away, but watched her storm off in a huff.  The final verdict – Gabriel Theodross and Burnt Face are “cancelled” from the festival for hurting the feelings of the festival organizer.  They had made the grave mistake of expressing how the treatment they’d received had made them feel.  This means that the whole collective is out of the festival, because we’re not going to go on without all of us included.  What a long strange week it’s been.  Meklit is going to use everyone’s Ethiopian connections to set us up some other gigs.

We played at the Addis Jazz School that evening to a nice full house in a good sounding room.  This was by far my favorite gig so far.  Having the program just be the collective seems to make much more sense, much less random, and it allows us all to actually play a set, rather than just 10 minutes at the end of a long program.  Of course, I always prefer a more acoustic setting, and feel I can really play as myself in this way.  We then all went out for some of the best Indian food I think I’ve ever had.  The food coma afterwards came on hard and fast though, and I hit the sack as soon as I could afterwards.

May 11

On the way back from Harar the other day, I’d struck a conversation with some Americans.  It turns out that one of them worked for an NGO that operates an orphanage in Addis for children born with HIV.  The whole collective went and played for the kids, and it was amazing.  Those children were so open, so full of love and life that all the troubles with our tour and the festival were suddenly blasted back into perspective for all of us.

I let all the kids try my horn.  One little girl in particular got a beautiful sound in the middle register right away.  We all played for them, and they sang and danced for us.  It’s good to remember why we do what we do.  We met a maseko (single stringed sort of bowed string instrument) player at the orphanage named Solomon.  He came and played a set that night at the gig with Darril and Evan, which was great.  He also sat in with Meklit later on.  THAT is the kind of thing I was hoping for musically on this trip!

When the club owner for the place we were supposed to play that night found out that Meklit and the rest of the collective were off the program, he called Meklit and told her that she was the only reason he’d agreed to have the festival there in the first place.  In the end, the festival lost the gig and we went on.  We did try to create compromise, but the festival refused to share the evening with Gabriel and Elias, and we refused to play without them.  Thankfully, the festival was able to move to a different venue.  It would be a huge drag if all of these political and personally vindictive goings on were to cost the other musicians their gigs.  They traveled a long way to be here too, are super sweet cats, and are in no way at fault for this.  We’re anticipating a similar situation for tomorrow night too.   The gig went very well for us.  The room was a little boomy, lots of hard surfaces but it felt great to be able to play an actual set of music again, and the collective on it’s own makes a great program of appropriate length.  I’ve started to meet the friends and family of the collective that live in Addis.  They’re awesome.  If I lived here in Addis, and I could picture that at this point, I would hope that these would be the folks I hung out with on a regular basis.

It’s such an honor to be here with these amazing artists, thinkers, and deep, deep souls.  I am so grateful.  Which reminds me, thank-you so much for all of you who contributed to Meklit’s fundraising campaign!!

Last night we had the night off, and after another fantastic traditional meal accompanied by an entire floor-show of traditional music and dance, we went to a local jazz club where Addis Acoustic was playing some great Ethio-jazz.  Our whole collective got up there in the second set and went over hugely.  Meklit had folks losing their minds when she sang Abbay Mado!  Hopefully that means we recruit some folks to come to our gig tonight.

I’ve been a fan of Ethiopian jazz for a number of years, but seeing and hearing it here in this place really turns one on to how deep and soulful it really is.  It fits and makes sense here.  I sat on the balcony playing along with Mulatu Astatqe recordings for a couple of hours yesterday, (after having some coffee with him!), winning a lot of smiles and waves from the folks below.  Stardust went over pretty well too though!

That traditional dancing at the restaurant was pretty unbelievable also.  These women were at one point shaking their heads so fast that it looked like some kind of special effect from a movie; you could see their heads facing opposite directions at the same time.  My neck started to hurt just watching them.

There’s so much contrast here, in terms of traditional verses modernity, and wealth versus extreme poverty.  You see huge modern buildings being built with rickety wooden scaffolding, right next to corrugated roof shacks.  You see high rollers with fancy phones in tailored cloths driving Land Rovers, and countless children with no shoes on the streets, selling gum or tissues.  I have a pretty healthy supply of both commodities at this point.  For less than a dollar you can make sure they eat that day.  The look of gratitude in one older woman’s eyes when I gave her 10 burr was at once heart-warming and devastating.

I’ve been uplifted and hopeful, like when I met some Americans last night that are here to help folks learn urban agriculture techniques and set up community gardens, and I’ve been horrified, like this morning at breakfast when I saw a man get robbed in the streets by someone who hit him on the head with a 2×4, grab some possession or other and take off.  People rushed to help the man who was bleeding from his forehead, and a taxi-van pulled over to grab the 2×4 and drive off, because, hey- free 2×4.  It’s a lot to take in, and we haven’t even made our 8 hour drive through the country side that’s coming up.  It’s only day 3!!

Thanks for reading.  More soon….

Ethiopia is a deep place, and I’m still trying to process it all.  The shift into such a different economy is difficult to comprehend.  It’s 16 Burr to one US dollar, so things seem really expensive, but I’m realizing that it’s the opposite, everything is really cheap, if you happen to be and American that is.  I’ve decided to become a great tipper for starters….

We’ve got quite the cast of characters with us on this trip.  We’ve got Meklit Hadero with us of course, and the rest of her band is Evan Flores-Barnes on bass and Darill Green on drums.  Darill’s brother Damon is with us, who seems like a great guy, and then Meklit’s cousin, the MC Gabriel Theodross, and another MC, Elias…hmm, I’ll have to get back to you on his last name, but he’s a great artist and fantastic spirit.  Then there are musicians from Italy, Berlin, Turkey, Ethiopia, and elsewhere that are all part of this festival, “Music Without Boundaries.”  We had a full showcase of all the artists last night.  It was a long program for my jet-lagged little brain, but a great time.  I look forward to hanging and making music with these folks as the trip continues.

The father of Ethio-jazz, Mulatu Astatke, was at our gig last night and wants to hang with us tonight!!  I’m going to spend some time with Ethiopique Volume 4 today so I can go in there with a bunch of his tunes under my fingers.  I sure hope we get to play some.

Other highlights so far include watching a donkey on the loose run down a main street in the right lane, fortunately staying with the flow of traffic, some of the most amazing food I’ve ever enjoyed, insane cab adventures, and sitting on my balcony practicing, watching the beautiful and diverse city of Addis Ababa roll by.

Thanks for reading.  More soon!  And hopefully some pictures too….