Debo Band with special guests Fendika

Date:  – September 17
Time: – 9:30 PM
Location: Joe’s Pub, 425 LAFAYETTE STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10003
Tickets:  Visit Website

Show Description

Debo Band is an exhilarating eleven-piece Ethio-groove collective created as a means of exploring the unique sounds that once filled dance clubs of 1970s Ethiopia. Made popular through the renowned Ethiopiques series, the musical inspiration behind Debo Band is an unlikely confluence of Ethiopian pentatonic scales and vocal styles, American soul and funk, and the instrumentation of Eastern European brass bands – accordion, violins, horns, and drums. Committed to a broad range of musical collaboration, Debo Band recently performed with Fendika, a group of four outstanding traditional Ethiopian artists, at the Ethiopian Music Festival (Addis Ababa, 2009) and the Sauti za Busara music festival (Zanzibar, 2010).

Led by Ethiopia’s top dancer Melaku Belay, Fendika is both a musical ensemble and a popular performance venue in Addis Ababa, in a way similar to the dual nature of Zanzibar’s legendary Culture Musical Club. With a powerful female vocalist, an exciting male and female dance duo, and a propulsive traditional goat-skin drummer, Fendika adds the vibrancy of Addis Ababa’s nightlife to Debo Band’s distinctive take on Ethiopian dance music.

Fendika will join Debo Band at Joe’s Pub in their New York City debut and their first U.S. tour.