MAHMOUD AHMED

 

I first (consciously) heard Mahmoud Ahmed on a tape of one of Pat's radio broadcasts from the late 1980s. The voice and the groove grabbed me instantly, but Pat quickly moved on to slagging off metal bands and dropping obscure UK hardcore 45s into the aether....so I didn't think about Ahmed much more. Then it happened on a tape of a different broadcast a few weeks later and that time the name stuck and I made a point of finding out who this artist was (extremely influential and productive Ethiopian singer who's been active since the 1970s). But still...it kinda got filed on my mental shelf. Then I popped in this tape, excited to hear an interview with Italian hardcore band RAW POWER. Instead, I got 40+ minutes of passionate and hypnotic EthioJazz and I was speechless. This music defies genre and context, and deserves far more than my pedestrian attempts to "describe" it...so I''ll just tell you that I just sat and listened once this recording truly revealed itself to me. And also that I might have quietly wept at the sheer beauty that I was hearing. That's enough...right?

MAHMOUD AHMED
Most of these tracks seem to appear on 1975's 'Ere Mala Mala,' but Ahmed has dozens of releases and compilations to his name, so who knows the actual source for this tape.