MUSIC

Habibi Funk’s new sister label Audible Beauty Records debut release: We originally came across Soliao's music after visiting Malaysia and Indonesia as part of some DJ gigs for Habibi Funk and were immediately head over heels with the music. A landmark collection retelling the untold story of Malaysian jazz featuring 11 songs from the legendary composer, arranger and pianist Alfonso Soliano, originally recorded for Radio Television Malaysia (RTM) and only released in a run of a few dozen copies for radio broadcast. Widely regarded as one of the foundational figures of Malaysian music, Soliano blended jazz, Latin influences and traditional Malay musical forms into a uniquely local sound of all original compositions. The recordings also feature contributions from some of Malaysia’s most important musicians and composers of the era, including Johari Salleh and Ahmad Nawab. For fans of Salah Ragab, Ahmed Malek, Mulatu Astatke, Dollar Brand and co. The release includes extensive liner notes and previously unpublished archival photographs documenting Soliano’s life and legacy. Includes a special gatefold LP with a 12-page booklet attached to the sleeve and featuring in-depth essays, archival photography and historical material. Fully licensed from the Soliano family.

Habibi Funk’s new sister label Audible Beauty Records debut release: We originally came across Soliao's music after visiting Malaysia and Indonesia as part of some DJ gigs for Habibi Funk and were immediately head over heels with the music. A landmark collection retelling the untold story of Malaysian jazz featuring 11 songs from the legendary composer, arranger and pianist Alfonso Soliano, originally recorded for Radio Television Malaysia (RTM) and only released in a run of a few dozen copies for radio broadcast. Widely regarded as one of the foundational figures of Malaysian music, Soliano blended jazz, Latin influences and traditional Malay musical forms into a uniquely local sound of all original compositions. The recordings also feature contributions from some of Malaysia’s most important musicians and composers of the era, including Johari Salleh and Ahmad Nawab. For fans of Salah Ragab, Ahmed Malek, Mulatu Astatke, Dollar Brand and co. The release includes extensive liner notes and previously unpublished archival photographs documenting Soliano’s life and legacy. Includes a special gatefold LP with a 12-page booklet attached to the sleeve and featuring in-depth essays, archival photography and historical material. Fully licensed from the Soliano family.

Welcome to the world of Edward Blankman, a retired dentist who wrote elegant, minimalist jazz in obscurity circa 1970.

At least that’s the story. In truth, Edward Blankman’s Cape Cod Cottage is the 2021 concept album from Echo Park composer Brendan Eder.

A tender, wistful follow up to 2020’s To Mix With Time, the Cape Cod Cottage sound evokes the spirit of Erik Satie, Miles Davis with Gil Evans, and Stevie Wonder, balanced with the accessibility of 1960s lounge-exotica.

Eder created Blankman’s story to channel his own grief, with bittersweet tenderness. Read the liner notes (or watch the mini-doc), and you’ll be transported to the quiet shores of Cape Cod, where a lonely retiree mourns his late wife, Natalie, with walks in nature and evenings at his Wurlitzer.

The story is brought to life with a meticulously crafted package sporting classic liner notes, faux 1970s photographs documenting Edward with the musicians (taken during the actual session), a make-believe jazz label, and a commissioned oil painting of Edward’s cottage.

Eder brought together a dream line up with a ton of chemistry for the project; drummer Christian Euman (Jacob Collier), saxophonist Josh Johnson (Jeff Parker, Leon Bridges), and bassist Alex Boneham (Billy Childs), who all studied together at the Hancock Institute of Jazz. Rounding out the group is flutist Sarah Robinson, a recurring player in Eder’s ensemble, and Edward Blankman (Brendan) on the Wurlitzer.

The cast was booked for a single date with coveted engineer Michael Harris (Kamasi Washington, Angel Olsen) at famed Electro-Vox Recording Studios. To create realism for Edward’s story, the charts were purposefully withheld from the musicians until they arrived at the studio. The result is an authentic and natural performance delivered by players at the top of their game, captured on lauded vintage equipment including the legendary Neve-8028 console.

Cape Cod Cottage will be released on September 10th including a gatefold vinyl.

“Kataomoi” is the 1962 debut song by Okinawan folk singer Misako Oshiro, who passed away in 2021.

Written and composed by her mentor, Teihan China (father of Sadao China), this song became Oshiro’s signature piece. Oshiro, who remained an active singer until the very end, continued to cherish and perform this song, nurturing it over the years.

This album features her disciple, Kanako Horiuchi, carrying on the legacy by performing the song.

Black Truffle is thrilled to present the first ever solo Donso n’goni recording from octogenarian Swedish multi-instrumentalist Christer Bothén. Active in the Swedish jazz and improvisation scene since the 1970s, often heard on bass clarinet, Bothén travelled to Mali in 1971, eventually making his way to the Wassoulou region in the country’s south where he encountered the Donso n’goni, the sacred harp of the hunter caste of Wassoulou society. Though playing the instrument has traditionally been restricted to those who belong to the hunters’ brotherhood, Bothén found an enthusiastic teacher in Brouema Dobia, who, after many months of intensive one-on-one lessons, gave Bothén his blessing to play the instrument both traditionally and in his own style. Returning to Sweden, he would go on to pass on what he had learned to Don Cherry and play the Donso n’goni in a wide variety of inventive settings, including the driving Afro-jazz-fusion of his Trancedance (reissued as BT118).

The seven pieces of Christer Bothén Donso n’goni offer up a stunning showcase of Bothén’s work on this remarkable instrument, heard entirely unaccompanied, except for the final piece where he is joined on a second Donso n’goni by his student and collaborator, the virtuoso bassist Kansan/Torbjorn Zetterberg, and Marianne N’Lemvo Linden on the metal Karanjang scraper. Produced by Johan Berthling (of Fire! & Ghosted) and recorded in three sessions in Stockholm between 2019 and 2023 in richly detailed high fidelity, the instrument’s buzzing, sonorous bass strings make an immediate, overwhelming sonic impression. Hyper-focused on hypnotically repeating pentatonic patterns, the seven pieces are at once relentlessly single-minded and endlessly rich in subtle variations. The concentrated listening environment turns small details, such as the deployment of the instrument’s segesege rattle on two of the pieces, into major events. Six of the seven pieces are traditional, with Bothén contributing the remaining ‘La Baraka’, but the line between tradition and the individual talent is imaginary here: as Bothén explained in a recent interview with The Wire’s Clive Bell, ‘I play traditional and untraditional, and I play the music forward and backward’. While the traditional Wassoulou pieces provide the rhythmic and harmonic elements, Bothén’s individuality as a performer is alive in every moment, felt acutely in boundless variations of attack, improvisational flourishes, and unexpected accelerations and decelerations. Captured entirely live and bristling with spontaneity, this music is undeniably the product of almost half a decade of Bothén’s devotion to the Donso n’goni and its traditional music.

Accompanied by detailed new liner notes by Bothén and stunning colour photos from his time in Mali, Christer Bothén Donso n’goni is a stunning document of a remarkable instrument, played with an almost spiritual intensity by one of contemporary music’s great explorers.

An auster and dialed compilation of 1920's and 1930's ballads. All plaintive solo vocals accompanied by the banjo. No dance songs. Instead you get intense very American tunes about existential angst, murder, love, mystical happenings and so on. The mana. As far as we know, this is the first record to compile purely hard hitting banjo ballads from the golden 78 era. A treasure....

Crucial listening if you're into Still House Plants, caroline, Tara Clerkin Trio, Moonshake or even This Heat, London-based duo Curbside Lambsear's debut upsets the foundations of post-rock, slowcore, noise and folky prog by adroitly integrating electronics and studio techniques; there's songs in there, but there's far more going on than that. Made up of caroline violinist Magdalena McLean and The Umlauts' Annabelle Mödlinger, both Austrians who found themselves in London, Curbside Lambsear arrive fully formed. Best friends, they met while studying in Vienna before properly connecting years later when they were moving in the same musical circles. They were both motivated by London's unstuffy experimental pop scene, particularly Mica Levi and their acolytes, but also obsessed with fringe post-rock like Tarwater and Duster, so they decided to develop something far enough away from their regular ensembles that they could work on a signature sound. Indeed, the EP emerges from a course of experimentation when McLean and Mödlinger decided to adapt on the go, fixing a sound while they learned new instruments, shared poems and voice notes and getting themselves comfortable with the process of working in a DAW. Where this might have lead to a sequence of demos, McLean and Mödlinger were confident enough and skilled enough to rustle up one of the best post-rock EPs we've heard in a while. The chugging, processed guitars and loping drums of opener 'No Ordinary Word' might lock into the capital's underground family tree at first, down the line that gave us Dome, Disco Inferno and Bark Psychosis, but McClean's effortlessly cool, insouciant vocal delivery puts it alongside gear from Tirzah or Raisa K. And on the keyboard mashed 'Jjochstubn', the duo spend a good four minutes pulling apart the traces of a song; "the winter takes it all," McClean hums, the voice timestretched across crooked, slowed-down drums and buzzing A/C on-the-fritz soundscapes. Even when the tempo picks up, the smoke doesn't fully clear - Curbside Lambsear thankfully don't seem particularly interested in clean sounds. Best of all is 'Avril', where McClean's casual words are dropped over euphoric noise, hyper-compressed drums and feedback forming what might as well be a pop song. Brilliant stuff, beginning to end.

Another spellbinding compilation exploring the depths of overlooked Greek folk music from the curatorial genius Christopher King. Highlighting the virtually unknown work of the heartbreakingly haunted hypnotic clarinetist Kitsos Harisiadis. From 1929 through 1931, Harisiadis recorded instrumentals that have endured in the Epirotic repertoire well into the twenty-first century. Kitsos plays all fourteen pieces as if he were a Greek-Shaolin monk conversing with a grasshopper at his feet. Through King’s painstakingly thorough research and immersive story-telling, the listener is able to fully absorb the otherworldly aura that radiates throughout the release. Painstakingly remastered directly from ungodly rare original 78 rpm discs and coupled with artwork by R. Crumb and design by Grammy Award-winner Susan Archie, the entire package is delightful in every sense.

PRE-ORDERSep 18, 2026 (EST) LP - Black SS083lp 6669454152402 $13.00 3 TOTAL 3 Teranga, the final album in the Wau Wau Collectif trilogy, the dreamy cross-cultural collaboration across cultures, finds the band finally coming together. Taking its name from the Wolof word “teranga” is used to express a welcomeness, a hospitality to others, and something loosely as a shared meeting - an apt title for the album that is an expression of a meeting. The project began in the village of Toubab Dialaw in 2018, where two musicians Arouna Kane and Karl-Jonas Winquist first conceived of the idea. Over the subsequent years, the project evolved, with the two producers trading files back and forth over WhatsApp, incorporating their network of friends and colleagues into what would become a the Wau Wau Collectif, culminating in their first album “Yaral Sa Doom” (2021) and "Mariage” (2022). Their latest album, Teranga, is the third entry and final entry in this trilogy, finalized and mixed during the the band's first live tour - a five week sprawling journey across Europe with "three swedes, three Senegalaise, and a french driver, a lovely mess of languages”, Karl-Jonas explains. At the heart at the heart of Wau Wau Collective is a strong musical foundation, borne not just by the wide cultural swath from which the collective draws inspiration but from the deftly talented musicians - composed and performed with a staggering 26 different songwriters and musicians, playing an impressive array of instrumentation, from balfon, ngoni, calabasse, violin, cello, saxophone, and omnicord. The resulting sound is complicated to place, but sonically has certainly found its place in Teranga. At times, dreamy and meditative, but imbued with an organic soul, a wholly unique sound that is both anachronistic and future facing. “Oh, Africa” could be at home on a classic reissue, with an almost Turkish guitar riff, where 100 ans (their first live studio recording) reminiscent of early 2000s Amadou et Mariam.With roots in avant garde (Karl-Jonas has cited Barney Wilen's Moshi as an inspiration) while Wau Wau draws inspirations from these experiments, though diverging in their dedication to the collaborative spirit - a project enabled by cellphones, WhatsApp, and mp3s zipping around the internet - slightly ironic considering how acoustic and grounded and human it feels. As we close the chapter on the trilogy, Karl-Jonas insists that this may well be just the beginning: “we have barely started in some ways” he says, with plans shaping in the next year for getting the whole band together, and more tours on the horizon, more hope, more humanity, and more coming together.

With a mix of modern and traditional instruments these fourteen songs go through the progression of an Ethiopian Amhara wedding sung in Amharic. With the trio of singers, Lemma G. Hiwot, Zenebech Tesfaye, and Selamawit G. Selassie, alternating turns at the microphone, and sharing call and response duties, a relentless frenzy of hand clapping incites dancing and smiles. The consumption of tedj (honeywine) and the swirling love of a wedding was captured in the studio with euphoric energy to take away to play over and over again when the festivities are over. With hand screened covers and an insert of wedding photos accompanying the liner notes, this is the next best thing to an invitation to the real thing. Originally released on Philips Ethiopia in 1973. A co release with Mitmitta Musika of Addis Abeba, Ethiopia.

The second LP compendium of Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru’s early solo piano works, recorded throughout the 1960s – finally available again. Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru is a true original – her compositions and unique playing style live somewhere between Erik Satie, Debussy, liturgical music of the Coptic Ethiopian Church, and Ethiopian traditional music. It is some of the most moving piano music you will ever hear!

These original compositions, performed by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru herself on solo piano, were originally self-released in Germany in small editions as fundraisers for orphanages, support organizations for widows of war victims, and other philanthropic causes. We are humbled and proud to present this album in collaboration with the EMAHOY TSEGE MARIAM MUSIC PUBLISHER and Foundation, and to assist in continuing her life-long mission of using music as a vessel to care for those who have been abandoned by society, or harmed by strife.

Black vinyl LP comes in black inner-sleeves and heavy cardstock jacket with color printing and gold-foil stamping, and song notes by the composer herself. Restored and remastered by Timothy Stollenwerk.

First volume of solo piano compositions by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, finally back in print. Born to an aristocratic family in Addis Ababa in December of 1923, Emahoy spent much of her youth and young adulthood studying classical music in Europe. She returned to Ethiopia in the 40s, where the war interrupted her musical studies. In 1948 during a church service in Ethiopia, she found her faith and began years of religious training. Throughout her physical and spiritual journeys, Emahoy continued to compose for the piano. She first released this album in Germany 1963 as small private press record. The tracks reflect her own travels, seamlessly moving between Western classical and traditional Ethiopian modes, evoking Erik Satie, the orthodox liturgy, and meditative Christian music all at once. Her work is like no one else in the world, lyrical, hypnotic, full of spiritual warmth and a direct connection to the divine. Emahoy is now 98 years old and still lives in Jerusalem. She continues to play, and the funds from her work go to the righteous causes to which she has dedicated her life. We are incredibly proud to present this music on vinyl again, mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk and presented in collaboration with the EMAHOY TSEGE MARIAM MUSIC PUBLISHER and Foundation. This black vinyl LP version includes a new reproduction of the original artwork, with the composer’s own notes, translated from the original German.

From beloved composer Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, a revelatory new album of piano pieces, unreleased or virtually inaccessible until now!

Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru is a true original – an Ethiopian nun whose recordings have funded orphanages back home since the early ’60s. Her compositions and unique playing style live somewhere between Erik Satie, Debussy, liturgical music of the Coptic Ethiopian Church, and Ethiopian traditional music. It is some of the most moving piano music you will ever hear.

This is the first archival release of the great composer’s recordings since the Éthiopiques series reintroduced her music to the world in 2006. Drawn from original master tapes and a nearly impossible-to-find vinyl release, Jerusalem unveils profound new facets of Emahoy Gebru’s performance and compositions.

The record picks up where the last two Mississippi releases left off, with tracks from her 1972 album Hymn of Jerusalem, of which only a handful of copies are known to exist. These include “Home of Beethoven,” “Aurora,” and a true masterpiece that stands amongst her greatest compositions, the moving “Jerusalem.” “Quand La Mer Furieuse” is the first release featuring Emahoy’s singing voice, forshadowing a vocal album planned for fall 2023. The B-Side brings us the artist’s home recordings - tracks like “Farewell Eve,” “Woigaye Don’t Cry Anymore,” and “Famine Disaster 1974” mark a bridge from liturgical work to dark and intense classical material, a new mode.

This album is released in celebration of Emahoy Gebru’s 99th birthday on December 12, 2022. Mississippi is honored to work with the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Publisher to continue to introduce this visionary composer to the world.

Newly remastered recordings pressed on 160gm black vinyl, heavy jacket with reproduction of 1972 artwork, song notes by the artist. 

Buenos Aires composer Ignacio Sandoval, aka YOTO, returns to London's Kit Records with a new album of dismantled Argentinian folk music. Taking root at the border between Latin American folk tradition and the kiln of Buenos Aires' distinctly bustling experimental arts scene, Ciprés is a loose-limbed collection of elegiac storytelling. Guitar remains at the heart of YOTO's practice; each piece on Ciprés began life as a miniature improvisation, recorded in real time then gently adorned with splintering melodies of marimba and xylophone, and funereal marching percussion. The results form a series of private moments; internal sculptures and scenes that speak to the intimacy and solitude of domestic life. Like fellow Argentinian boundary-pushers Aylu and Vic Bang, YOTO's previous work bubbled with a fermented maximalism (see "Levure"). In contrast, Ciprés alludes to weathered forms - dialogues that fork, disintegrate and improbably rekindle, like aerial roots feeling their way through an ancient city wall. When Sandoval's voice does appear - on "Viento De Otoño" - it casts a dappled, swaying shadow..

Death Is Not The End unearth Ercilia Costa’s haunting 1920’s and 1930’s Portuguese Fado recordings made in Madrid As played in the label’s 20’s & 30’s Fado Special for NTS, Ercilia’s songs epitomise the melancholy elegance of Fado, a style of Portuguese folk music with roots in Moorish guitar music, and connections to old Portuguese trading routes and colonies.

Death Is Not The End return to the soul-stir sound of deep south Sacred Harp Singers in 1993 - although it could feasibly be any time since the advent of portable tape recording - in the blessed company of the Union Grove Baptist Church, Ozark, Alabama. Feels just right in this humidity… The Wiregrass Singers' Dewey Williams began learning the shape-note tradition in his childhood. He studied under Judge Jackson, who authored the landmark 1934 hymnbook The Colored Sacred Harp. In 1971, Williams formally organized The Wiregrass Sacred Harp Singers to preserve the music full-time. This unified troupe began touring nationally and leading workshops, which ultimately launched them onto stages at the Smithsonian and Newport folk festivals up until Williams' passing in 1995 when the group disbanded. The African-American Sacred Harp tradition in the Wiregrass region has steeply declined since the start of the 21st century, due to an aging generation of singers, and today it is largely sustained through archival preservation and occasional multi-book singing meetups. This raw recording, made at the Union Grove Baptist Church, Ozark in mid-April 1993 finds the group singing from B. F. White’s The Sacred Harp (1844), which together with his brother-in-law William Walker’s Southern Harmony (1835) formed the musical backbone of generations of Southern music and Southern musical styles.

Gary Sullivan's Bodega Pop project returns to Dinte with a cassette-only collection of traditional sounds plucked from CDRs found in the night-markets of Savannakhet, Vientiane, and Luang Prabang. "In Lao PDR, music was seemingly everywhere. Walking through an open field outside Savannakhet to the sound of someone playing a khaen on a distant porch, the bracing rush of electronic molam from of one of Vientiane’s many aging malls, the awkward blending of the blind so u player’s voice with the bustling sounds of Luang Prabang’s night market. It was in that UNESCO World Heritage Site that I found most of the CDs and CD-Rs from which I’ve ripped the tracks for this compilation. I’m almost certain I picked up a thumb drive at the night market that held many hours of additional music that could have been included, but if so, I’ve misplaced it, lost it for good, or simply misremember purchasing it in the first place. What I do remember is that these discs were literally the last copies in the cafe, museum, bookstore, and night market where I bought them, and not all of them played all the way through without sonic deterioration. The sounds compiled here play in stark contrast to the more contemporary recordings I found in Laos, most of which featured some form of upbeat digital workstation molam or children’s songs. In addition to the ever-present khaen, this collection includes recordings of the sanai, a single-reed instrument fashioned from a water buffalo horn, the ceremonial khong nyai gong, the pi and similar free-reeds, and at least a dozen more traditional instruments played by Lao and ethnic minority artists. While some of these tracks were laid down in Vientiane or Luang Prabang, most were recorded near where the artists lived, from the legendary Vat Phou in the far south to the former Pathet Lao capital Xam Neua in the northeast. Unlike Laurent Jeanneau’s more focused Lao collections for Akuphone and Sublime Frequencies, which remain among my favorite albums of all time, the present cassette-only selection is literally all over the PDR map. The sequencing is entirely in response to rhythm and texture and includes recordings from the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and early aughts. This may frustrate those with more of an ethnomusicology bent, but my hope is that the listener experiences something akin to wandering for the first time through this majestic country, encountering the last copies of forgotten recordings one after another, and hearing in these remains fragments of the past and a living musical landscape." – Gary Sullivan

Capturing an in-situ rehearsal of The Sterling Jubilee Singers, a long-running African American a cappella quartet, 'Jesus Hits like the Atom Bomb' provides an intimate view of a dying folk tradition. We should all know by now the foundational influence African American gospel music has had on subsequent popular forms, from country to house, but we rarely get to hear the real thing. This set was produced by the Alabama Folklife Association and aimed to document the rigorous process the Sterling Jubilees went through each week to maintain their notoriously high level of activity. The group was formed way back in 1929 from African American miners and mill workers in Birmingham, Alabama, and 'Jesus Hits...' catches up with them in 1994 in a hall that serendipitously sat next to a railway line. And whether you have any interest in OG gospel a cappella music or not, it's fascinating to hear the quartet in their element, praying in-between recreating their elaborate (and impeccably sung) set of standards. It's a porthole into another universe, for those of us who grew up far from the American South.

This album from 1965 is a survey of traditional music in Vietnam. The first half presents the music of the “pre-Vietnamese” highland Degar (also called Montagnard) and Cham, two ethnic minorities of the region. The second half covers the music of the ethnic Vietnamese, with traditional chamber music, the music of the ancient imperial courts, and folk songs. The selections were recorded by the venerable Vietnamese songwriter and musicologist Phạm Duy, who also wrote and performs three of the tracks. Liner notes include photographs and background information on the songs.

Bamboo is the mainstay of Kmhmu music, especially the reedpipes, flutes, blowing-tubes, mouth organs, and percussion instruments heard here along with cymbals and gongs, wooden drums, and exciting vocal styles. Drawn from 15 years of field research that extended from garden apartments in suburban California to mountain villages in Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand, this CD samples the deep reservoir of musical traditions maintained today in Kmhmu communities. The first of its kind, this recording reveals the enduring beauty and individuality of each community's performances.

A landmark collection from one of Guinea’s greatest African singers is finally back. West Africa is widely known as a treasure house of African music, but within that region, it is the culture of the voice that holds a particularly special place. This compilation presents the definitive works of the legendary vocalist Sory Kandia Kouyaté, who stands at the very summit of that tradition.

On her second album Ursgal Mongolian singer Enji creates a unique blend of Jazz and Folk with the traditions of Mongolian song. Currently based in Munich, her lyrics tell personal stories about unbearable distances, the oddness of being on earth and the simple truths in life. She’s accompanied by Paul Brändle on guitar and Munguntovch Tsolmonbayar on double bass. Born in Ulaanbaatar, Enji grew up in a yurt to a working-class family. Having always been drawn to music, dance and literature, she initially wanted to become a music teacher with little ambitions to compose or be on stage. A program by the local Goethe Institute sparked her passion for Jazz and eventually led her to become a performing artist. Inspired by the music of Carmen McRae, Ella Fitzgerald and Nancy Wilson, Enji started writing songs of her own, cherishing this newfound means of expression. Ursgal is the first record featuring her original compositions.

Hi-energy electronic dance music from Northern Ghana, created by farmers turned musicians working out of DIY rural studios. Relentless percussion, trance loops, heavy autotune and slinky VST synths. Sourced from locally-released VCDs circulating the markets of Dagbon and entirely unavailable outside the region until now. Studio Simpa collects tracks from the past decade of the neo-traditional Dagomba dance genre, modernized traditional percussion dance - produced by Mohamed “Ebony” Fuseini, recording drums on his phone and recreating the sound of traditional music via FL Studio. Collaborating with “Gawani”, flashy singers from the surrounding villages and local VCD producers, Ebony created hyper-electronic versions of simpa for the local video market, complete with suggestive videos of women shaking their hips - light cultural transgression in the predominantly Muslim Dagomba North. The compilation showcases the top artists of the scene - Dickson Gawani, Bala Zaaku, Yaa Naara and others - across a range of style and subject, from political commentary to warrior clan rhythms. Includes extensive liner notes by Morgan Greenstreet with artist interviews, cultural history, and song translations.

Electronic lullabies and folk songs from Ethiopia! A landmark recording from Ethiopia’s vibrant cassette era of the 1980s, Resonance of Time features pioneering composer Wesenyeleh Mebreku reimagining Ethiopian folk melodies through the humble circuitry of an early Casiotone keyboard. Historically, the works featured on Resonance of Time (የጊዜ ቃና Yegizie Kana) stand as quiet documents of Ethiopian musical memory. Many of the original songs included in this release emerged during important moments in Ethiopian history when music carried the collective emotion of the nation - love, loss, resistance, dignity, and hope. By arranging these pieces from Ethiopia’s musical heritage instrumentally, Wesenyeleh Mebreku aimed to preserve their essence while protecting them from being confined to a single era or performance style. In doing so, his preservation of Ethiopia’s musical heritage became a contribution to his country’s musical legacy itself, as Resonance of Time serves as an important musical milestone of this composer’s innovative recordings and musical developments in the prolific era of Ethiopia’s 1980s cassette tape culture. On Resonance of Time, Wesenyeleh made use of the first Casio electronic keyboard - the Casiotone CT-201 - to arrange and perform Ethiopian folk songs in his own unique style. Implementing the soulful, lo-fi character of the keyboard, Wesenyeleh’s interpretations of these works take on a life of their own. Charming analog tones interpret swirling sounds of organ and piano in kignit modality to the beat of a nostalgic rhythm machine while twinkling synthesizer sounds carry the melodies drifting out of time. The recordings reflect a watershed moment in Ethiopian musical history - when traditional melodies started being interpreted on electronic keyboards, and the advent of cassette tape recording allowed for music to be transmitted more accessibly than centuries-old oral traditions. During this time, Ethiopian musical modes were syncretized with new technology and budding musical experimentation, and Wesenyeleh’s interpretations on Resonance of Time are a landmark recording of this era, following in the tradition of reflecting upon and re-interpreting historical Ethiopian music for a new generation. Featured on the release are timeless Amharic folk songs and lullabies, Tigrinya love songs, Gurage and Oromifa popular songs, and even works closely associated with performers from Ethiopia’s 1970s popular music era such as “Tiz Alegne Yetintu” (ትዝ አለኝ የጥንቱ) which was famously performed by Tilahun Gessesse. Each piece, thoughtfully chosen by Wesenyeleh, is beautifully transformed into instrumental music of his own style - allowing these worlds of song to echo into the future while they are synthesized with the electronic innovations of the 1980s and Wesenyeleh’s own musical history. Wesenyeleh says this about his musical approach - ”Instrumental music, for me, is a space of reflection. Without words, the listener is invited to remember, imagine, and feel freely. In Resonance of Time, I hear my own musical philosophy: respect for Ethiopian kignit, careful dialogue with Western harmony, and a deep trust in melody as a storyteller.” Each piece performed on Resonance of Time speaks to a time when Ethiopian music was shaped by oral transmission through live performance and communal listening. In today’s fast-moving musical environment, revisiting these works is an act of cultural responsibility. These works remind us that melody once traveled slowly, settling deeply in the listener’s heart. The instrumental format allows these works to cross linguistic and generational boundaries, making them accessible to audiences who may not know the original lyrics but can still feel their spirit. Resonance of Time also reflects a broader historical dialogue: the meeting of tradition and adaptation. Ethiopian music has always evolved while holding onto its core identity. These arrangements affirm that evolution does not mean abandonment. Instead, it can be a form of safeguarding - ensuring that the musical wisdom of the past continues to resonate in the present and inspire the future. In this sense, the album is both personal and collective. It carries Wesenyeleh Mebreku’s own musical fingerprint, shaped by decades of practice, but it ultimately belongs to a wider cultural continuum. It is the artist’s contribution to keeping time audible so that memory, history, and sound may continue to speak to one another.