What is Ethio-Jazz?

The term ‘Ethio-Jazz’ refers to the genre of Ethiopian music (jazz) that first started appearing around the 1970’s with several Ethio-Jazz groups throughout Ethiopia. Mulatu Astatke, born in 1943, is known to have been the godfather of Ethio-Jazz itself. I did a recent post entitled “What is Afro beat?”, and interestingly enough, both Ethio-Jazz and the Afro beat style are similar in the sense that they are heavily influenced by a lot of American Jazz/Soul classics, but incorporate their own groove, flare, and cultural style to the music, making it even light years better than anything previously recorded, and for usually on less than half the budget than most of the previous big sellers of their day. What is interesting is the quality of these songs from Ethiopia are not at all produced like Motown records, but many times just recorded with one single microphone and a live band.

Most people would not have ever had the opportunity to hear this very lesser known and almost geographically exclusive form of music, but several songs from Mulatu Astatke as well as other Ethio-Jazz artists, where recently featured in the major motion picture entitled, Broken Flowers, starring Bill Murray. I found it funny that they felt the need, like most underground genres do, to promote the one mainstream connection to sell more of the music, as you will see in the picture above, they added “including three songs from the movie Broken Flowers”. This is for the ignorant Americans who can’t trust music outside of their top 40 chart, unless the music has been first “approved” by a familiar movie or television show.

But enough about that, there is a music series available entitled “Ethiopiques”, which is a compilation of hundreds of authentic Ethio-jazz musicians/bands from the era. I had read recently that they are still releasing music from the series, but I highly recommend checking out some of the first volumes available. My personal favorite Ethio-jazz song right now is from Ethiopiques Volume #1, which is an instrumental that is full of heavy sax lines, entitled Ewnet Yet Lagegnesh. Give it a listen!

Religion Bashing

It seems popular to take a strong position against any given religion these days, but I’ve noticed that this ‘religion bashing’ trend, similar to other routines in life, are nothing more than finely tuned facades. The attack on religion is another brilliant idea that is designed to appear anti-fascist, open minded, and “secular”, but the attitude in fact takes on the exact opposite of these traits. Protesting religions and/or belief systems allows a person to feel they’re involved in some epic battle that holds deep meaning, but this very attitude has become more of a misguided religion in itself than any other religious group out there. And the amusing detail about those who hold extreme stances against the freedom of religion is that they’re simply protesting the very freedom they not only expect, but are practicing by not having a religion themselves. That is the beauty of freedom, we get to believe what we want!

It’s especially painful to hear people wining about religions, churches, and spiritual traditions when the reality is that if they claim to have no religion themselves, they should be the last people on earth concerned with these issues in the first place. Honestly, why put so much energy into it? For example, you won’t find me going around town boycotting Santa Claus and you know why? Because I know he doesn’t exist! So why put your time and energy boycotting churches, the Koran, the Pope, Buddhism, Judaism, Taoism, or anything else “preaching” to you, when you know them to be delusional in the first place?

Let me be clear that I feel it absolutely necessary to protest any form of injustice, corruption, or criminal activity found to be caused by a particular group of religious or cultist psychos, period. But with that being said, remember that there are thousands of murderers, predators, thieves, and criminals on the news each day who all have one thing in common, they don’t kill in the name of religion. They may have destroyed others lives out of passion, jealousy, greed, lust, insanity, or any other list of emotions, but since we often have no religious group to blame for the atrocities, we will just get upset about these injustices and move onto the real perpetrators; religious groups.

What do you think? Do you think people should have the right to practice their religion? What would be the perfect solution to you? Would it be satisfactory for you to have all the churches shut down and any religious texts burned that are not to your liking?

New ‘G.I. Joe’ Movie – Snake Eyes Photos

I used to play with toys when I was a kid, and lots of em’. But my all time favorite was defintely G.I. Joe. And I’m not talking about the 1960’s doll versions that parents rave about, I’m talking about the good quality ones that surfaced around the 1980’s, where you could actually move every joint of the figurine, incluing the wrists, elbows, and knees (and they had the bootleg black rubber band holding the torso together).

I must have had every single last one of these G.I. Joe figures, including a grip of the vehicles and accessories. I also loved the TV show and the movies, just good stuff. My favorite character, just like every other dorky guy, was Snake Eyes. Now he went through a few different costumes, but he always looked like a bad ass. I had been hearing that they were making a motion picture of G.I. Joe (set to come out in 2009), and was at first pretty disappointed since Hollywood without fail has successfully destroyed any classic comic book and TV show remake. However, I did just come across these photos released of the new ‘Snake Eyes’ from the new motion picture, and I must say that it looks damn cool. I hope they don’t ruin this film or have Paul Walker in it. Well I read that Dennis Quad is in it, so I know that’s bad enough. And remember, “knowing is half the battle”!

Below is a picture of just one of the old ‘Snake Eyes’ versions (toys):