Free Love and War Songs? Gétatchèw Mèkurya

My girlfriend and I were watching the film “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” (1993), the story of Ike and Tina Turner, a couple of nights ago. After finishing the film, I eagerly went over to my record collection and said to her: “I know he was bad news, but I gotta play you something!”

So, I pulled out my best Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm record only to be abruptly stopped in my tracks:
“I don’t want to listen to that,” she exclaimed, “I don’t care if he is a genius or not. I’m not interested!”
This brings me to the unusual and unique example of Gétatchèw Mèkurya, a true individual in the world of Ethiopian music, who one day decided to transpose with his saxophone a traditional vocal style of Ethiopian war songs. Performing in a military cape and head gear resembling a lion’s mane, Mèkurya plays a music called ’shellèla fukara’, which involves shouting and howling, until you lose your throat into the instrument playing a music that spirals into less and less structure and inhibition. It is liked by Ethiopian audiences because they can recognise it as the vocal style of their war songs which is saying “We will kill you. We will cut the balls off you. We will do this, and we will do that,” (Francis Falceto) and when Mèkurya plays, each and every Ethiopian can hear behind the saxophone these lyrics shouted as loud as can be.

Gétatchèw Mèkurya started his pioneering adventures in music in 1952-3, a full 10 years before the beginning of the US Free Jazz Scene. Like all Ethiopians at this time, he was unfamiliar with music from the rest of the world (including the rest of Africa), and knew little or nothing of international Jazz Culture. He had been lucky enough to be recruited by the Municipality Orchestra of Addis Ababa where he had learned to play the saxophone performing in theatres and bands, and that was it. End of story. If we now fast forward to present day, Gétatchèw Mèkurya can be found playing with cutting edge Free Jazz Bands where his style is now compared to that of Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler. Mèkurya loves playing with these bands (who love playing with him) as he is given the chance to blow and blow, competing with all, to see who can go furthest in their music. It is in this Free Jazz movement built on the morals of the 1960s civil rights movement that the war songs of Gétatchèw Mèkurya have found their home.

Although unique in his own way, Gétatchèw Mèkurya is not the first to reveal this incredible dichotomy that allows traditional values to sit comfortably next to cutting edge modern ones. Sun Ra arrived at the same point travelling in the opposite direction, leaving his origins in the open Chicago Improvised Jazz scene of the 1960s and ending up in a separatist, traditionalist, afro-centric sect claiming it could save the world. If it hadn’t been for this, the musical innovations in improvisation and communal creativity as practised by Sun Ra would have elevated his name to the very top of the Jazz world. As it stands though, he remains a cult figure on the fringes, just as does Gétatchèw Mèkurya.

I heard Gétatchèw Mèkurya’s music before I found out they were based on war songs, and am now left in two minds. As anyone who has studied modern cultural theory knows, there are many routes to end up at the same artistic conclusion, some morally sound and others not. But to prefer the music of Duke Ellington to that of Charlie Parker just because of their private lives, though understandable, also leaves an uncomfortable feeling. With regards to Gétatchèw Mèkurya, who can say if it is possible to take a moral ‘high ground’ on his music, as even if in the past he was cut off from the Free Jazz movement, by now he must be more than aware of what it represents?

Timjim 2008

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