Second Sundays: Mandingo Ambassadors & Feedel Band

Two mesmerizing live sets of electric fusion by bands with Guinean and Ethiopian roots selected by Olivier Conan and recorded during the Pioneer Works Second Sunday open house event in April 2014.

Feedel Band
Washington D.C. is home to the largest Ethiopian community outside of Ethiopia, so it’s no surprise that some of the greatest exponents of the 70′s era Ethiopian fusion made popular by the series Ethiopique should be based there. DCs’ Feedel Band is probably the last of the great Ethio Jazz bands and features saxophonist Moges Habte, from Addis Ababa, who also played with one of the most celebrated Ethiopian group of the 1970′s, The Walias Band – you might have heard their track Muziqawi Silt in Jim Jarmush’s Broken Flowers. Of late The Feedel Band has been mining their 70’s roots and working with producer Thomas Gobena (Gogol Bordello’s bassist, Debo Band producer) on a full-length album for Electric Cowbell Records.

The Mandingo Ambassadors
In the 1960′s and 1970′s, the government of Guinea engaged in a campaign known as Authenticité. It was a drive to create a new musical movement that would be specifically Guinean, but would include the modern wonders that were the electric guitar, the electric bass and the drumset. Surprisingly, for a government-sponsored program, the results proved mesmerizing and a myriad new bands were born. The Mandingo bandleader and guitarist Mamady Kouyate was one of those pioneers. He played in a number of bands but most notably with the Bembeya Jazz National – Guinea’s most celebrated band. Kouyate has been living in NY for a few years now where his Mandingo Ambassadors are deeply involved in New York’s Guinean life, but also regularly play for American club and festival audiences.

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