Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (የኢትዮጵያ ፌደራላዊ ዴሞክራሲያዊ ሪፐብሊክ (Amharic)), is a country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east and southeast, Kenya to the south, South Sudan to the west, and Sudan to the northwest. Ethiopia covers a land area of 1,112,000 square kilometres (472,000 sq. miles). As of 2023, it is home to around 128 million inhabitants, making it the 13th-most populous country in the world, the 2nd-most populous in Africa after Nigeria, and the most populated landlocked country on Earth. The national capital and largest city, Addis Ababa, lies several kilometres west of the East African Rift that splits the country into the African and Somali tectonic plates.
Links to Peel[]
Peel would occasionally play Ethiopian recordings from the BBC Archives on his Night Ride shows and some of them were added to the John Peel's Archive Things album, released in 1970.
Tashamanaletch
A few years later Peel obtained some Ethiopian records and played them on his Top Gear shows (see Getachew Kassa and Alemayehu Eshete). When Peel was featured in the Wire magazine in 1995, which involved identifying records the interviewer played, he mentioned after Alemayehu Eshete & Shebelle's Band's Tashamanaletch song was played, that he obtained Ethiopian records many years ago:
"I've got a bunch of Ethiopian 7" singles about 15 years ago and you can just recognise the style... It's a great noise though, because it sounds like it could be anything"
However, that period of him obtaining 7" inch Ethiopian singles, were more likely to be in the early 70's, as there is no evidence that he played Ethiopian records in the early 80's, according to available tracklistings on this site. Nonetheless he did play occasionally Ethiopian records from Mahmoud Ahmed later on in his shows.
Ethiopia was also the inspiration for many ska and reggae musicians in Jamaica, including the group, the Ethiopians, as well as Rastafarian musicians that Peel played on his radio programmes.