Ethiopiques 31 – MULUKEN MÈLLÈSSÈ
It was Muluken who inaugurated the Ethiopiques series more than twenty years ago with Hédètch alu, the B-side of his first single (AE 440, released by Amha Eshèté in February 1972). Betraying the singer's extreme youth (he was not yet 18 at the time), his angelic voice fooled more than one listener into thinking they were hearing a female singer. He was not yet 22 when he released his last vinyl record on Kaifa Records (KF 39LP) in 1976, one of the last released in Ethiopia before the cassette became the dominant medium for music distribution.
Ethiopia, 1976. For a year now, cassettes have been inexorably crushing the vinyl record market. Muluken Mellesse's 33 rpm album [ሙሉቀን፡መለሰ፡ Muluqèn Mèllèssè / Muluqän Mälläsä], KF 39, produced that year by Ali Abdella Kaifa – Ali Tango! – on his Kaifa Records label, is historic in more ways than one. It is one of the last vinyl records released in Ethiopia, but more than that it is the absolute masterpiece of Ethiopian Groove – and its swansong. It leaves posterity with a clear idea of the level of sophistication and mastery that modern Ethiopian music had reached before it was crushed under the military-Stalinist boot of the Derg – the word that stands for the bloody revolution that had been underway since 1974.
