“[W]e’re trying to take that whole Ethio-jazz concept and move it forward into this century,” trombonist Ben Hall says about the album. “We’re trying to put a spin on the older dance styles that we love, and still have it danceable but with our own twist to it.”

Most of the compositions are instrumentals that were penned by Feedel’s keyboardist and leader, Araya Woldemichael, with two songs from other members. Some have a relaxed feel more appropriate for listening than dancing — “Behelme,” for example, starts off smooth before transforming into a more straight-ahead jazz number.

Other cuts are more vibrant: The title track starts off with a guest playing the Ethiopian masenqo, a one-string violin, and then a rough-edged male voice comes in, using the pentatonic scale identified with Ethiopian church music. Eventually, the song adds psychedelic horn riffs. Album closer “Araya’s Mood” has a repeating James Brown-in-Addis modal structure along with fuzzy, psychedelic guitar lines and clever keyboard fingerwork.

Hall says the six-year-old Feedel Band has wanted to do an album since the beginning but “we weren’t able to finance it till now.” They self-financed the release and Hall says they have bought Facebook ads that have spurred interest in Ethiopia. The band recorded Ethiopian Ocean from May through August at Cue Recording Studios in Falls Church, Virginia, with engineer Blaine Misner, and then sent it to veteran mastering engineer Charlie Pilzer, who put together the finished product at Airshow Mastering in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Friday, the band is scheduled to perform with veteran Ethiopian pianist Girma Beyene at D.C.’s Atlas Performing Arts Center. Beyene — who worked as a gas station attendant in D.C. before moving back to Ethiopia — is best known for his rhythmic jazz standard “Muziqawi Silt,” and playing with legendary group the Walias Band.

“The project with Girma Beyene is to recreate his songs with a Feedel Band sound,” Hall says. “We’ve been transcribing the recordings and rehearsing them to put forward the best product for Girma.”

Feedel Band and Girma Beyene perform Oct. 14 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

“Obviously, at first, music and libraries seems like a head-scratcher because libraries are quiet,” says local promoter, artist manager and record-label owner Jim Thomson. But for the past six months, Thomson has been helping change expectations about what goes on inside D.C.’s public libraries.

On behalf of scrappy theater nonprofit Capital Fringe, Thomson has been programming “Fringe Music in the Library,” one of two series bringing live music to the D.C. Public Library system. The other series is strictly punk rock, presented by the library’s D.C. Punk Archive. DCPL has been hosting those noisy gigs since October 2014 to help promote its growing collection of D.C. punk ephemera. The latest show takes place downtown tonight — with D.C. bands Give, Puff Pieces and The Maneuvers — then Friday it’s back to Thomson, who’s bringing in D.C.’s CooLots under the Capital Fringe banner.

For the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library — D.C.’s central library downtown — these shows help it build a reputation as a cultural center. It’s a rebranding for a facility that’s been dogged by systemwide budget cuts and criticism of its Brutalist architecture. (The District is planning to overhaul MLK Library in two years and add an auditorium.) DCPL has also had to confront complaints from residents who openly — many would say crudely — gripe about homeless residents who utilize the library’s amenities. Then there’s the bigger picture: Libraries all over the world are facing questions about their role in the 21st century. Could it be prudent to focus on libraries not just as information warehouses, but cultural beacons?

“One of our primary goals is to establish the library as a go-to place for local culture.” —Linnea Hegarty, executive director of the D.C. Public Library Foundation

Linnea Hegarty, the executive director of the D.C. Public Library Foundation, seems to think so. She says the foundation covers the costs of both D.C. Public Library concert series — including fees to the bands — and says they’re now funded through 2016. “One of our primary goals is to establish the library as a go-to place for local culture,” Hegarty writes via email.

Capital Fringe is best known for its annual performing-arts event, the Fringe Festival. But last year, under Julianne Brienza’s leadership, the organization hired Thomson to take over music-booking at the festival, then asked him to handle the eclectic library shows she had set into motion. Those events overlapped with the D.C. Punk Archive’s basement shows, which Martin Luther King Jr. Library music librarian Maggie Gilmore says were “designed to increase attention to and support of the D.C. Punk Archive,” its ongoing effort to document the District’s three-chord rock scene.

Michele Casto, one of the librarians who helped get the D.C. Punk Archive off the ground, says DCPL wants to show that the punk archive isn’t just about long-gone history.

“Having shows that feature current local bands helps reiterate the point that the archive is 1976 to the present, that we’re documenting local music that’s happening now not just local music of the past,” Casto writes in an email.

The punk gigs also aim to support the next generation of D.C. musicians. “For every show, we’ve tried to include a band that’s either just getting started, or that consists of kids — i.e. bands that might have a hard time getting a gig in a club,” Casto writes. “This gives them a place to get experience performing.”

The punk shows take place every other month and have included raucous performances from Joy Buttons, Hemlines, Flamers and Priests. Under Thomson, the Fringe gigs have dabbled in punk, too — roping in punk provocateur Ian Svenonius multiple times — but they’ve prized diversity, bringing in the rarely seen soul singer George Smallwood, Afropop vocalist Anna Mwalagho, jazz/poetry act Heroes Are Gang Leaders and the Ethiopian Jazz Quartet with Feedel Band‘s Araya Woldemichael.

“I hope that the citizens will come in and get inspired by seeing an Ethiopian jazz quintet and go, ‘Wow,'” Thomson says.

Some younger residents, it seems, have already found that inspiration. When guitarist Anthony Pirog performed at the downtown library with his surf band, The El Reys, librarians projected the film Endless Summer while kids bopped around. They were “dancing and bouncing around wildly, full of excitement for the music,” Gilmore emails. “That put a smile on everyone’s face.”

Now, if only more people would come to the shows.

Woldemichael guesses that at his recent library gig, “50 percent of them were curious folks and the rest were my friends, family members and fans.” Thomson acknowledges that a recent performance at the Benning Road library only brought a handful of people. “The branch libraries are a little more challenging to get attendance,” he says. “Mainly location, location, location. It’s hard to get interest in it, or to publicize it.”

The promoter hopes that momentum will build over time. “I know from when you are working with regular venues, you don’t get a slam dunk in the beginning, always,” he says. “You have to plant a seed and let it have a chance to germinate. We are really in a very early stage.”

Meanwhile, artists seem appreciative of the series’ benevolent mission — even if the room doesn’t fill up.

“Heroes Are Gang Leaders really felt that this performance [at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library] was a special opportunity to reach out to and interact with longtime D.C. residents, amidst the city’s advanced stages of gentrification, displacement and widespread oppression of many Washingtonians,” band member Luke Stewart writes in an email.

Plus, it gives residents a chance to absorb culture — for free — that they wouldn’t normally come across, Thomson says. In a way, that’s the role of a library in the first place.

“For me, the side benefit is to go into libraries that are in parts of the city that are not part of my everyday life,” the promoter says. “It helps you interact with the city. I like to see these different things that makes the city as an organism come to life.”

Give, Puff Pieces and The Maneuvers play the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 6 p.m. June 11. The CooLots play at noon on June 12. For a complete schedule of Capital Fringe concerts at D.C.’s libraries, consult this calendar. The Punk Archive basement shows are usually publicized on the D.C. Public Library’s Facebook page.

Top photo courtesy of Jim Thomson

Original post:

The Washington region is home to one of the most robust Ethiopian music scenes in the world — possibly second only to Addis Ababa itself — and D.C. Ethio-jazz ensemble Feedel Band includes some of its top players.

Feedel saxophonist Moges Habte and bassist Alemseged Kebede are well-known for their work with Walias Band, a group that thrived during the height of the Addis jazz scene in the 1970s. (Also in Walias was Hailu Mergia, a D.C.-area cab driver whose music career found its second wind in 2013.) Both Kebede and keyboardist/bandleader Araya Woldemichael have performed with huge acts including vocalist Aster Aweke, who’s been called “Ethiopia’s Aretha Franklin.”

But it’s easy to catch Feedel Band (“feedel” means “alphabet” or “letters”) playing a casual gig around town. The group performs on the first Thursday of each month — sometimes with cameos from notable Ethiopian artists — at Bossa Bar and Lounge in Adams Morgan.

When the band stopped by WAMU in November to play two songs for Bandwidth, it was one of the most hectic sessions we’ve produced yet. Band members and instruments were everywhere. It felt chilly outside but balmy in the studio, with 10 musicians, three videographers, one photographer and two engineers sharing the cramped space under hot lights for hours. But in the end, the chaos felt worth it.

Feedel recorded two Woldemichael-penned songs in the studio that night: “Girl From Ethiopia” (with guest vocals from the bandleader’s nephew, Dibekulu Tafesse of Jano Band) and “Ethiopian Ocean.” I asked Woldemichael how both compositions came together.

The simmering “Girl From Ethiopia” is a love song. “I wrote [it] for my beautiful wife,” Woldemichael emails. “We all must show our love for the wives in our lives, and I’m lucky enough to combine two of my favorite things in the world: love and music.”

Meanwhile, “Ethiopian Ocean” is more of a history lesson. It stemmed from Woldemichael’s discovery that the body of water now called the South Atlantic was once called the Ethiopian Ocean.

“You can clearly see the name Ethiopian Ocean that was used for thousands of years,” Woldemichael writes. “I said to myself, ‘This doesn’t make any sense… I have to do something about it.’ A lot of my people didn’t know about this great history. History is extremely important. Imagine if someone [took] from you … everything you knew about life up to last week, and just erased it. Where would you be? You would be lost.”

It’s tempting to get lost in the two songs Feedel recorded for us — but if you pay attention, you’ll notice the band is a carefully calibrated machine. Study that rhythm section. It’s locked in. And don’t forget to bend your ear toward the two traditional players in the room: Minale Bezu on krar and Setegn Atenaw on mesenko.

Above, listen to Feedel Band play “Girl From Ethiopia” live at WAMU. (Things get really wicked around 1:39, so your patience is worthwhile.) Then immerse yourself in “Ethiopian Ocean,” below.

But the best way to experience Feedel Band is to catch the ensemble live. Their next monthly gig at Bossa arrives on June 4.

Want to follow Bandwidth’s newest videos? Subscribe to our channel on YouTube. Special thanks to Brendan Canty for mixing both “Girl From Ethiopia” and “Ethiopian Ocean.”

Photos by Rhiannon Newman for WAMU