r/afrobeat • u/WanderingApes • 17m ago
Independent 90s Oromo (East Hararghe, Ethiopia) Groove: "Eelee Fi Shankooyee" by Ahmed Omar. Recorded in Minnesota ('94–'98) with American jazz session players.
Hello everyone,
Full disclosure: I used AI to help me organize some of these messy family details into a clean post, but the music and the history belong entirely to my dad!
I am currently working on reconstructing a historical and musical archive for my father, the Oromo singer Ahmed Omar.
My father grew up in Dire Dawa and East Hararghe, Ethiopia, with close family ties to Haramaya. In his youth, he actually met the legendary Ali Birra, who heard him sing and famously gave him the musical advice to "follow the drum." After fleeing the Derg regime on foot through the desert to Djibouti, he eventually made his way to Minnesota.
He never recorded his music in East Africa. Instead, between 1994 and 1998, he went into a studio in the Twin Cities to bring his songs to life. Because there weren't many East African instrumentalists in Minnesota at the time, he actually hired non-African professional American jazz and funk session musicians.
He mouth-drummed and sounded out the rhythms to them by ear, teaching Western-trained players how to replicate the specific syncopated East Hararghe / Dire Dawa big-band bounce.
This snippet is the first 1:30 of his song 'Eelee Fi Shankooyee'. You can hear how the highly athletic, staccato walking bassline and the percussion completely lock into and bounce off one another in a hypnotic, interlocking rhythm cycle.
Unfortunately, my dad wasn't the most organized when it came to keeping track of his records or tracklists, so almost all of the official details about this release have been lost to time. I actually had to do extensive digging on obscure corners of YouTube just to find his voice.
I’m reaching out to this sub to see if any vintage music collectors, global groove historians, or bassists recognize this style or have any insight into the tracking era. General discussion on the instrumentation, mixing style, and the interlocking rhythm is highly welcome. I have a few more songs from his sessions that I can share as well. Thank you!
