the ex: etiopian tour
The Ex was formed in the Netherlands in 1979. Altough they sprang up with punk, they had a special attitude from the start. In addition to DIY and anarchist ideology, they had a real desire to experiment and look for new ways of doing things. As well as making records over the last 35 years, The Ex have listened to music from beyond the UK and the US: Turkey, Hungary, Ethiopia, the Congo… And, unlike other people, they have never had an aesthetic or promotional attitude. The Ex have explored music which has come from other countries with passion and formed links with it. A sign of that is the special tours they organize. There have been a lot of them over the 35 years the group’s being going. Their first tour in Ethiopia in 2004 (and they’ve been back since) caught our attention. Their passion for music led them to take their instruments, sound system and a generator and head for Ethiopia.
We’re reprinting the interview Andy Moor did with them for the Ethiopian News. Why Ethiopia?
I’ve been listening to African music for twenty years. There are around ten Ethiopian restaurants in Amsterdam and we’ve been going to them for some time now. When we found out the music there was being played on cassettes, we asked for the recordings. Amongst them, there was a strange name we could never get to learn. We really liked it. That’s when we discovered Getachew. The first time we went to Ethiopia, we got hold of loads of her cassettes.
On tour
We didn’t go to concert halls. We set up our concerts in the street, in public areas. On the steps of an abandoned theatre, in a square... We also played at a petrol station and three thousand people turned up… it was crazy. Of course, we soon learned that we had to ask the police for permission first and, even though they asked us for money a few times, we did get to play. We used to advertise the concerts ourselves by taking a car and telling people about them using a megaphone; obviously, they were free concerts.
One of our worries at first was what people would make of our songs. That’s why we chose a set of
melodic songs but, all of a sudden, we clicked and started included the mad songs we really love in our sets. And, in fact, those were the most successful ones. They were songs full of energy and rhythm and they were probably more familiar to them. Even so, the whole thing must have been very strange for them. There’s never been punk there. They do have a bit of hip hop, a bit of R&B, some soul and James Brown from the 60’s and so on… But I don’t think they’d ever heard punk music. People responded in an unusual way. I think they were shaken up and surprised. What was a strange Dutch group doing there, mixing up their noisy stuff and Ethiopian music? Even so, that’s what we tried to do. We learned a bit of music and a few songs from there and combined them with our own music. The concerts were big parties. It was probably something pretty strange for them, but it was a show. And they always gave us a positive response.
The Kingdom of the Cassette
Cassettes are the usual way to listen to music in Ethiopia. Music is for sale on cassettes. Copies of copies of copies. CDs are too expensive and cassettes are what people play in cars and taxis. So we made 10,000 copies of our music and gave them away while we were on tour, leaving them wherever we could. We gave loads to taxi drivers: they’re the ones who get music heard and carry it around. They took our music everywhere. It was a great experience.
We’re reprinting the interview Andy Moor did with them for the Ethiopian News. Why Ethiopia?
I’ve been listening to African music for twenty years. There are around ten Ethiopian restaurants in Amsterdam and we’ve been going to them for some time now. When we found out the music there was being played on cassettes, we asked for the recordings. Amongst them, there was a strange name we could never get to learn. We really liked it. That’s when we discovered Getachew. The first time we went to Ethiopia, we got hold of loads of her cassettes.
On tour
We didn’t go to concert halls. We set up our concerts in the street, in public areas. On the steps of an abandoned theatre, in a square... We also played at a petrol station and three thousand people turned up… it was crazy. Of course, we soon learned that we had to ask the police for permission first and, even though they asked us for money a few times, we did get to play. We used to advertise the concerts ourselves by taking a car and telling people about them using a megaphone; obviously, they were free concerts.
One of our worries at first was what people would make of our songs. That’s why we chose a set of
melodic songs but, all of a sudden, we clicked and started included the mad songs we really love in our sets. And, in fact, those were the most successful ones. They were songs full of energy and rhythm and they were probably more familiar to them. Even so, the whole thing must have been very strange for them. There’s never been punk there. They do have a bit of hip hop, a bit of R&B, some soul and James Brown from the 60’s and so on… But I don’t think they’d ever heard punk music. People responded in an unusual way. I think they were shaken up and surprised. What was a strange Dutch group doing there, mixing up their noisy stuff and Ethiopian music? Even so, that’s what we tried to do. We learned a bit of music and a few songs from there and combined them with our own music. The concerts were big parties. It was probably something pretty strange for them, but it was a show. And they always gave us a positive response.
The Kingdom of the Cassette
Cassettes are the usual way to listen to music in Ethiopia. Music is for sale on cassettes. Copies of copies of copies. CDs are too expensive and cassettes are what people play in cars and taxis. So we made 10,000 copies of our music and gave them away while we were on tour, leaving them wherever we could. We gave loads to taxi drivers: they’re the ones who get music heard and carry it around. They took our music everywhere. It was a great experience.
