Getachew Mekurya's Instrumental Music Collections የሙዚቃ መሳሪያ ቅንብር

Getatchew Mekurya was born on March 14, 1935, in Yifat, Ethiopia. As a child he learned to play traditional folk instruments: the kirar, a six-string lyre, and the masenqo, a single-string bowed lute. By his teens he had switched to saxophone and clarinet, instruments popularized in Ethiopia under the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie, who had a fondness for military brass bands. Mr. Mekurya spent his early career as a member of government-sponsored orchestras in Addis Ababa, starting at age 13 with the Municipality Band and continuing with the house band of the Haile Selassie I Theater. Later, as a member of the elite Police Orchestra, he often backed popular singers like Hirut Beqele and Alemayehu Eshete. As early as the 1950s, Mr. Mekurya was using his tenor saxophone to emulate the Ethiopian chants known as shellela, traditionally shouted by warriors going into battle. His quest for an impassioned, expressly vocal quality on the saxophone yielded a startlingly original sound, though it would later elicit comparisons to the 1960s free-jazz maverick Albert Ayler, whom he claimed at the time never to have heard.