Ejigayehu "Gigi" Shibabaw is almost certain to be filed in the "world" section of your local megastore-- the back of this CD case even says "File under: world/Ethiopia." In actuality, Gig's music is just another link in the ever-lengthening chain that girds the world in a pangaeic culture and doesn't deserve such a pigeonhole, despite the fact that she sings in Amharic. It's an imperfect world, though, one in which our way of thinking hasn't caught up to the reality of global interchange, so for now she'll slot right into our weird and essentially uninformative classification systems.
Ethiopia has a vibrant history of excellent pop music whose distinctive blend of traditional pentatonic scales with jazz and r&b influences has persisted in spite of dictatorship, censorship, and war. The greatest curator of that music, and especially of the 1960s and 70s "Swinging Addis" scene, Francis Falceto, has criticized Gigi's work as being somehow impure. It's hard to see how the Ethio-jazz and r&b that Falceto has done so much to preserve is any "purer," whatever that might mean. What Gigi has done is stepped outside of Ethiopia to embrace electronic music and dub.
She's brought the guttural language, melismatic singing, and pentatonic scale with her, though, and puts a distinct Amharic spin on her otherwise polyglot records. Check the lineup on Gold & Wax: producer Bill Laswell brings together musicians from Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America, including Bernie Worrell, Karsh Kale, Ustad Sultan Khan, Buckethead, Midival Punditz, and original Swinging Addis saxophonist Moges Habte. Naturally, Laswell gives the record a luscious low-end, and dub elements are never far from the surface, but he keeps it funky and adapts many of the old rhythms of the classic Black Lion and Sensation bands of the mid-70s.
"Salam", especially, has rhythmic echoes of classic Kaifa and Ahma 45s. With its triple meter and swaying bassline, the track plunges Habte's sax into a cavern of reverb while Gigi cuts loose. She alternates sharp enunciation with pure scat passages where she draws out long, tremulous notes and lets them take her where they will. The blend of these elements is so seamless that it's easy to forget that the tablas, drum sets, djembes, and congas you might hear cranking away in the same rhythm section were all developed in completely different parts of the world.
If there's a criticism here, it's that the record can be a little too seamless. Laswell can get wrapped up in a texture and forget to focus the spotlight on his star. A few more standout hooks-- Habte has the only knockouts-- might have driven home the individual songs on their own terms, whereas the album as it stands feels almost continuous. A tendency to stretch the songs out well past five minutes contributes to this feeling.
As a pure listening experience, though, Gold & Wax is still worth having. I don't limit that recommendation to the usual marketgoers of the "world music" ghetto, either. In spite of its exotic elements, this is an accessible record for people brought up on all kinds of music, from P-Funk to Madonna. And if you're knee-deep in Mulatu and Tlahou Gessesse records, check this to see where the music they helped to liberalize has ended up. You may be surprised by how much you like it.
