Newsletter 11
Summer 2002
- Ex in Ethiopia
- Movie première
- Index articleAfter our tour through
Ethiopia we took a rest, to take some time for some retrospection, for
refreshing our live-set, to refocus our enthusiasm. Nevertheless, we did
do some shows in April with the Ex Orkest. Among others the Taktlos-festival
in Switzerland, and All Tomorrow's Parties in England, curated by Shellac.
Besides, the gig in Tourcoing, France was our 1,000th concert! And it
seems that the first thousand are the most difficult. So who knows, what
the future will bring... (Don't tell, we don't wanna know. We love
surprises.)
Beautiful Frenzy, the
première
During the IDFA documentary filmfestival in Amsterdam in late 2001,
Beautiful Frenzy, a filmed portrait of The Ex, had its first two,
well-received screenings. In 2002 this was followed by viewings at the
independent festival in Gent, Belgium, the New York Underground festival,
and during the Smart Exhibition in Chicago, USA. Later this year it will
be shown at the Chicago Underground festival (August), and at the
Fylkingen festival, Sweden (November).
Next to that, the film is available on VHS-video (PAL-system only at the
moment, not yet NTSC), and together with Cut Productions we are sorting
out the possibilities of releasing it also on DVD after the summer.
The Ex & Han Bennink
in Ethiopia
(AS TOLD TO "DE VOLKSKRANT" NEWSPAPER, FEBRUARY 2002)
Addis Abeba is
really something else. The sun, the rarefied air, but mainly the
streetscape which is totally the opposite of superclean Holland. A
hotchpotch of huts and buildings, in all kinds of colours, sizes, and
states of being. No standard shapes or uniformity. All codes are just a
little bit different. Scales in the street are not meant to tell you that
you've grown fatter again, they're a "consult", to see if you
lost weight instead and therefore may be ill. Thousands of scents, from
herbs to sweat. Everybody and everything on the streets. Also the sick,
and the beggars, and the crazed. Tucked away safely in Europe, but over
here begging for money or for who knows what. A confronting directness.
Everybody staring at you. Wide open eyes. Interest, curiosity, and time.
No rules for whatever, like by us. Everybody's got to find his own thing.
Has to improvise.
So we feel at home pretty quickly.
Ethiopia has never
been colonized, and that difference with the rest of Africa is obvious.
Ethiopians are self-confident and proud. They're in their own development
and time. According to "our" statistics it's the poorest country
in the world, but, surprisingly enough, you see straightaway that people
don't feel bad at all.
"Sure it's gonna be alright," assures Tamru of the cultural
organisation "Friends of the Arts". We gotta believe him. We
can't go back anymore.
From the moment we are physically present, things starts to find their
way. No sooner. Otherwise it is just too vague for the Ethiopians. Quite a
change, when you come from a culture where concerts must be organized
months in advance.
Tamru goes from office to office and arranges that we're gonna play for
ETV, the Ethiopian television broadcasting. Sounds like a logical start...
The night before a small concert in a nightclub. The Coffee House Jazz
Club. Long soundcheck to check all the gear. But when we come back after
our meal for the concert, the place has changed into a fancy restaurant.
Covered tables in front of the stage. With candles and all. The Ex and Han
Bennink as dinner music!
Okay, we'll play a
bit later then, take some tables out, and with an ablazing gig of Han and
wild dancing at the end of our set, things turn out alright after all. The
manager, in a tight suit, is even extremely enthusiastic. It reminded him
of the "Golden 70ies", the golden period of Ethiopian popmusic
at the beginning of the early seventies, till the dark Mengistu-era. An
unprecedented explosion of creativity, which put also us on the track of
Ethiopia. We feel honoured.
Then the next morning,
our sleepy heads on TV. Live in the garden of the National Theatre, a
gross and vulgar building constructed by the Italian fascists in the early
30ies, at the main street through Addis. In no time there's a big crowd of
curious people. Han does a drumsolo on the metal fence and makes the
people laugh with his "stick-in-mouth-with-ooh-aah-screaming".
We play a couple of Ethiopian songs, which Katrin sings in Amharic. To
Ethiopians this seems almost like a miracle.
A couple of days later we are big news in Sunday's eight o'clock news.
About three minutes. We see Han drum on the tiles, The Ex jumping around
like madmen, and shots from two of our Ethiopian songs. It's been
broadcasted throughout the whole country, and while there's only one
channel, everybody with a TV has seen it. From that moment on we are being
recognised in the street all the time. In the market people start talking
to Katrin and of course she has to sing. They're totally aghast. A
foreigner who can talk Amharic a bit, that's already almost unbelievable,
let alone if she sings a whole song.
During the concerts the audience react quite directly, too. With Mahmud
Ahmed's "Tezeta", after certain phrases there's a lot of
laughter, after others there's shouting. Exciting and stirring to play. It
is a melancholy text about love and it seems, since Katrin now sings it as
a woman about a man, as if the subtleties are just a bit different as with
the original. Amharic is a language full of ambiguities and meanings.
Maybe we are not quite sure at all what they're talking about...
Emanuel, our Amsterdam
Ethiopian friend, feels more at ease day by day. He's home again. More
than 30 years ago it was he who was supposed to write the new constitution
for Ethiopia, but with Mengistu gaining power he soon noticed it was safer
to leave the country. The finer details remain a mystery, but the fact is
that everywhere we go he still seems to have contacts and know lots of
people. We bump into an old acquaintaince of his, professor Berhane, who
just got back from a lecture in Paris. He gloriously tells us that he has
just recovered a box of papers containing a whole new chapter in
Ethiopia's history!
But just as easy and no less serious Emanuel talks to scurfy streetkids.
It is inspiring and at the same time brings us closer to the
"real" Ethiopia.
Pop music still
seems to suffer from the blow caused by the Mengistu-government, even more
than ten years since the revolution of 1991. Many musicians of old are
dead, or desillusioned, or fled the country. The new generation go in for
drummachines, synthesizers, and other modern stuff. The magic of the 70ies
is still far away.
And yet there is another, lively, bubbling scene. Young Asmaris,
originally a kind of minstrels, playing music whole night, day in day out,
in tens of bars in the poorer neighbourhoods. Sometimes five to ten
musicians and dancers with even so many people as audience. But it's
totally alive. They're Ethiopia's freedom of speech, allowed to say and do
whatever they want. With an enormous energy and drive. And wordplay all
the way. We come in bars with people crying from laughter. It's fantastic
pure entertainment with an incredible musical quality. The "esketa",
that typical Ethiopian shock-shoulder dance, is unequalled. We really feel
like Dutch stiff jerks when two feet away the next irresistable dancer
raises the roof in heat. Oops!
At the auditorium of
the Yared Music School we give a workshop. The building is a gift from
Bulgaria. Solomon Lulu, the principal, also composer of the new Ethiopian
anthem, is crazy about football, and once he has seen Johan Cruyff play
live.
As we arrive we hear from various class-rooms Bach and Mozart, and also
traditional Ethiopian music. Later on the hall is full of curious music
students. Han has a blast. Plays everything within reach! Gets angry when
a student asks: "Can you play a 7/8 note?" ... "Of course!
But I'm not fucking interested! I play 5/8, 6/8, 7/8 etcetera, whenever I
feel like it! I improvise!" Rattling on a chair he leaves the
students flabbergasted.
Also something like The Ex they have never seen. The ladies from the
administration leave the room pretty quickly, as do some men in expensive
clothing, but the majority is totally stunned, as if there's a whole new
world opening up before them. One boy plays a duet with Han on Andy's
guitar. It's the first time he plays the instrument, but there's surely
nothing wrong with his sense of rhythm. A woman tells Katrin that she also
would love to play drums, but there isn't any drumkit at the school. And a
bass-player shows Luc how one should really play "Tezeta", on a
clumsy amplifier. At the school there are three Bulgarian electric
guitars, but no amps.
We had already intended to leave our music gear in Ethiopia. Now it also
was clear why.
Our bus driver is
called Girma, about sixty years of age, formerly a body guard of emperor
Haile Selassie. A fire-eater with friendly eyes. At the most unexpected
moments he's doing his exercises; swings his legs with souplesse or stands
on his head. When he was young he did an education to become an Orthodox
Christian priest; after the fall of the Emperor in 1975 he finally became
a bus driver. Now he drives The Ex and Han Bennink.
The road to the
North, to Bahar Dar, is very small, hobbly and full of stones. Actually
quite amazing that this in fact is the only highway. There used to be
asphalt years ago. But also for the tanks, in the battle of the communist
dictator Mengistu against the rebels from the North in the eighties, this
was the only route. The road surface has ceased to exist, here and there
rusty carcasses of tanks still rest on the side of the road. Apart form a
spare truck most road-users are people by foot and packed donkeys. No
roadblocks or other controls.
Everywhere people are waving at us indefatigably. When you stop they all
are very curious. Half of the population exists of children. "Farange,
farange!!" (foreigner), "You, you, where are you go?",
"Welcome to Ethiopia!" and naturally also "Money,
money!"
We drive over the plateau with endless fields of teff, the Ethiopian grain
and other crops. Everywhere people in the fields. Ploughing, treshing,
planting, harvesting. Herds of cows and goats, all with shepherds. Land
without fences. Impressively plain. Somehow it reminds you of pictures
that you know from paintings from the Middle Ages. It is prosperous,
although per region you can notice whether it's going better or less good.
Either well cared-for settlements, raked and clean, or more chaotic and
poorer. During the rainy season there must be a lot of water, judging from
the enormous now dry riverbeds, apparently criss-crossing the country. The
views are breathtaking. The Blue Nile, the origin of 80% of the water of
the Nile, is brown, but majestic.
Because a lot of
people, due to lack of roads and the inhospitality of the mountainous
landscape, hardly travel at all, every town is completely different of
character and atmosphere. Bahar Dar, for instance, is not a chaotic
arbitrary settlement like Addis Abeba, but a city with a lay-out. Wide
boulevards with palm trees and lots of new buildings. It's gotta become a
true modern city, the "gari's", the horse-and-carriage taxis-in
many cities quite a good and clean way of public transport-can't be found
here, and there are even signs here saying "forbidden for
donkeys".
We play in the big theatre. An enormous hall with chairs and a gigantic
stage. A sound hole, because the space for scenery and stuff is totally
empty. Concrete. We install our gear and do a little soundcheck. Doesn't
sound too bad. Han is busy warming up. It's going to be exciting. Not
often do Ethiopian bands play here, let alone a foreign one.
That day we made a lot of publicity. Do it yourself! Speakers on top of
the bus. Dolf, our technician, in his element. The Ex-cassette on and
announcements in Amharic. Girma, the driver, totally loves it. Gert-Jan
and Stijn have rented bicycles, tear through the town and put up posters
everywhere. Tonight concert! Farangie-band! 10 Birr!
Basically it's time to start, but then we're told there's only five
tickets sold... Shit! Those 10 Birr (about 1.5 euro) probably still is too
much. Or is it something else? The building, the publicity, the time? Of
course, it's true that we are absolutely unknown over here...
We cancel the concert and decide to try it again tomorrow. Outside this
time, on the square in front of the theatre, and for free. Han still
sputters. Warming up but not playing is almost impossible for him.
The next day it is packed with people. The whole square crowded! We
estimate 5000 people. A wild concert follows. Finally Han can let off
steam. People split their sides. Again a wave of unbelief and enthusiasm
when we play our set of Ethiopian songs. Afterwards we're being besieged.
People want to exchange addresses. Writing, talking, asking. Gert-Jan
tries to sell our special Ethiopian Ex-compilation cassette, but there's a
massive rush, everybody at the same time, it's impossible.
That night we eat one of the best injeeras ever, with vegetables and fish
and we drink first-rate tej, the honey-wine. No complaints about taste and
vitamines anyway. The everywhere available fruit-juices are hard to beat!
Banana tastes like it is meant to and the avocado reminds in nothing of
the cardboard taste at home.
Ethiopia still has an image of famine, but we feel healthier by the day.
The next town is
Gondar. We bump straight in the middle of the Timkat feast. An ancient
Christian feast. The town is crowded, and there's three days of colourful
processions. Dignified orthodox priests walk with replicas of the Arc of
the Covenant underneath embellished parasols. At the back and in the front
it is totally in African-style. Drums, singing, round dances, jigging.
Hundreds of naked kids jump into the Bath of Fasilidas. It is a
commemoration of the baptizing of Jesus in the river Jordan. But mainly
it's a merry mess.
Ethiopian Christian holy-day or not, of course we're allowed to play!
Really Ethiopian: things go the same for ages, but rules can be adjusted,
when you come with a good idea. We find a square with a platform, take 220
volts from the bus battery, and again 5000 people flock in. Three
soldiers, who have come to guard us, are wrapped up in the music. In the
front children are dancing, and the more we raise the roof, the more the
people seem to like it. Once in a while we disappear in big clouds of
dust. Sweat, desiccation, and shortness of breath (altitude 2500 meters),
but it is a blast to play for such a curious, unbiased and so
direct-reacting audience. After the concert we are once again a bit
overwhelmed by all that.
Lalibela is famous
for its 12 churches carved in solid rock. Until recently it was hardly
attainable, and still it does seem to be like further back in time. Girma
has there been once before, in 1969, with a helicopter, with emperor Haile
Selassie. At that time there lived about 200 people. Right now there are
10,000, but still it is small, with a rustic heart full of typical round
huts with two floors, unique for Africa.
We find a suitable, mounting terrain near the policlinic. There's not even
Ethiopian Television over here, so we don't get recognized. It also means
the people over here almost never see things from outside Lalibela. Let
alone that they would know something like Han Bennink and The Ex...
Exciting!
The audience comes flocking in rapidly, especially since there is a power
cut in the village, so our soundcheck cannot be easily missed. Almost
naturally the people sit down and quietly wait for the event to start. The
little children can sit upfront, behind them the adults, and up to
hundreds of meters further away, at the top of the road, there's loads of
lookers-on. Also do we see old people and beggars, surprisingly watching
this picture of busy back-and-forth running white people.
When we walk back to the hotel, after the concert, we feel a bit like
taken in by the village. People cry at us: "Musica!", and out of
several cafés we hear our cassette at full blast. "State of
Shock" out of a corrugated-iron Tej-Bet (honeywine bar). Excellent.
At the hotel we are treated to a coffee-ceremony. Flowers on the floor,
the roasting of the coffee, popcorn, incense. Girma tells for hours about
"zar", the Ethiopian magic art. Enthusiastically mentions many
examples of how it works, but as a Christian he can't admit of course that
he believes in it... It gets late that evening.
Back in Addis, the
planned concerts are as vague as before. As soon as we left town, nothing
has happened anymore. Once you're gone, you're gone. When you're back
again, everybody goes back to work for you. "You can dig a river, but
you'll never know how deep it is", goes an Ethiopian saying. So be
it. Two more concerts. Then back. The airport.
Girma comes to wave us goodbye. He thinks we were the best group he has
ever toured with in 30 years. We think this was our most unbelievable tour
ever!
INDEX magazine June/July
2002
PUNK ROCK IN ETHIOPIA? THE DUTCH ANARCHIST BAND LIVE AT BAHAR DAR!
STACY WAKEFIELD INTERVIEWS GUITARIST TERRIE HESSELS
THE EX IN ETHIOPIA
HOLLAND'S GREATEST PUNKBAND FINDS A BRAND NEW AUDIENCE.
STACY: The Ex toured
Ethiopia this past January for three weeks. How did you get the idea to do
that?
TERRIE: Our Ethiopian friends in Amsterdam suggested that we do a tour.
They told us that Ethiopia is just now beginning to recover from the
terrible period of the Mengistu dictatorship. Our friends said that the
people back home could do with some inspiration - that they needed to hear
something besides Michael Jackson and Madonna.
STACY: You're not much inspired by Madonna either. I know you've been
interested in Ethiopian music for a long time.
TERRIE: Yes, and the music has always been very much tied into what was
happening politically. You see, Haile Selassie became the ruler of
Ethiopia in 1928 when it was still a feudal country. Under his reign, free
speech was forbidden. But in the '70s, things suddenly changed. Ethiopian
students knew about the revolts in Paris in '68, and they got politicized.
Haile Selassie was old and couldn't control this new wave of idealism. It
was a little like the explosion of punk rock.
STACY: So the music got interesting after 1968?
TERRIE: Yes, but there were some important developments earlier. In 1936,
Haile Selassie went on an official visit to Jerusalem, and he was welcomed
by a brass band. He'd never heard anything like it before, so when he
returned to Ethiopia he ordered saxophones and horns for his own country,
and went on to organize state-sponsored bands. There was the police band,
the bodyguard band, and so on. So by the '60s, all these Ethiopian brass
bands and orchestras were playing pop music in new and inspired ways.
STACY: How long did the renaissance last?
TERRIE: Until '75 or '76, when the communist Mengistu regime took control
of the country. That revolution started as a left wing student rebellion,
and was not so bad in and of itself. But it happened right at the height
of the Cold War, when America had a presence in Somalia. So of course
Russia got involved. Suddenly there was a very strict curfew, and the
heavy censorship came back. A lot of pop musicians fled the country - and
some were even killed. If you listen to cassettes from that period, you
can hear how much the music changed from one year to the next. By 1977, it
became crap.
STACY: Was there no good music at the time?
TERRIE: In the poor neighborhoods, you still had all these pubs called
asmaribets, where street musicians called asmaris performed. The asmari
musicians play the masenko, which is a one string fiddle, and a
five-string harp called the krar. During the years when free speech was
censored, you could give the musicians some money, and they would sing for
you what you couldn't say out loud - they literally embodied the free
speech of earlier times.
STACY: I know you've been to Africa a few times. You traveled through
twenty-one countries in 1996. What was your first impression of Ethiopia?
TERRIE: When I went the first time, I didn't know what to expect because
there weren't many guide books back then. But I found Ethiopians to be
open and laid back in a way that we hadn't encountered in other regions of
Africa. Ethiopia is the only African country that was never colonized, so
I think they have a particularly strong pride in their culture.
STACY: Can you envision going back to play music in any of the other
countries you traveled through on that first trip?
TERRIE: Not really. In South Africa, there are all these jazz festivals,
but the atmosphere is terrible because the feeling of apartheid is still
so strong. It's really the white circuit we would end up in. And central
Africa feels very chaotic and dangerous compared to Ethiopia. Ethiopia is
incredibly safe.
STACY: Tell me about the logistics of the tour. It's not every day that a
rock band tours an African country.
TERRIE: First we needed to find funding, because we knew we wouldn't make
any money from the tour. And three things were expensive - the flights to
Ethiopia, the equipment, and the bus rental once we got there. There are
hardly any buses in Ethiopia. So we got money from a cultural organization
here in the Netherlands and from the band Chumbawamba in England.
STACY: How did you get Chumbawamba involved?
TERRIE: They're friends of ours, so I shamed them into it. [laughs] Their
first LP was called Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records a reference
to the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s. So I said they could give some money
from that record to Ethiopian kids! Seriously, though, since their big hit
on EMI a couple of years ago, they've been giving away the money they made
to various causes. They are still an anarchist collective. So I knew they
would be willing to pay for the musical gear we needed. After the tour
ended, we donated everything to the Yared Music School in Addis Ababa.
STACY: Were there any Ethiopians traveling with you?
TERRIE: Our friend Emanuel came along from Amsterdam. We also had a great
driver named Girma, who was with us for the whole three weeks. He was once
a priest, then he became a bodyguard for Haile Selassie. He looked amazing
- someone had bitten off one of his ears in a fight over a girl when he
was younger. After the communist takeover, he became a bus driver. But he
also knew everything about Ethiopian black magic. He would always say that
he didn't believe in it, then he would spend two hours describing how it
works!
STACY: So these guys were your cultural go-betweens?
TERRIE: The most important thing was that they knew the customs, which are
very complicated. There are a lot of misunderstandings in Ethiopia,
because no one ever says "no".
STACY: That must have made it difficult to arrange the shows.
TERRIE: Yeah. It was especially complicated negotiating the social
hierarchies in the northern towns, where there's still a mixture of feudal
landlords and communist bureaucrats. But as long as we notified the people
in all the different offices and paid them due respect, we were able to do
pretty much whatever we wanted. We had another guy along with us who would
go from the district council to the cultural attaché, who would in turn
phone the head honcho in the region ... Everyone had to know about the
show.
STACY: Did anyone ever try to stop you?
TERRIE: No, they were always very accommodating and flexible. We showed up
in one town in the middle of a three-day religious celebration, and they
let us play that evening anyway.
STACY: Did you ever have to bribe any officials for permission?
TERRIE: No, no. Ethiopia's not at all corrupt that way. Girma had to stop
at a checkpoint once, but he didn't even have to show any papers. The
checkpoints are just leftovers from the communist regime - they aren't
really official. Everyone stops to be courteous to the checkpoint guy and
chat a bit. And Ethiopians are real discussers. Until 1935, they had a
justice system in which people settled a disagreement by discussing it on
the street in front of a crowd. When it was a heavier squabble, the two
would be chained together until they worked it out!
STACY: It sounds like a very old-fashioned social structure.
TERRIE: You have to look hard to recognize how it works, because it does
seem chaotic at first. It can be very confusing because everything is
right in your face. As with the rest of Africa, there's a lot of poverty
and disease, lots of people begging in the street. In a way it's a very
anarchic society. Even the language has countless double meanings.
STACY: More so than other languages?
TERRIE: You can say almost anything without really saying it - like you
can ostensibly talk about the church but really be speaking about sex.
When the Italians occupied Ethiopia during World War II, they released
more than one hundred records of Ethiopian-language songs as propaganda,
and half of them were actually resistance songs. The Italians didn't know
because of all the double meanings.
STACY: Thats amazing! The tour must have been difficult to organize. You
had to bring all your own equipment, right?
TERRIE: Yeah, because there was nothing there. We even had to generate our
own electricity in some towns. Also, people don't organize beforehand
there - planning just doesn't exist. When I went to Ethiopia last March
with our other guitarist, Andy, to see if a tour was possible, they looked
at us like, "If you want to come next year, why are you here
now?"
STACY: Did you play in clubs?
TERRIE: Of the eight shows we did, only one was in a nightclub. The rest
were outside - because that's where life really happens in Ethiopia. In
Bahar Dar, we were scheduled to play in a big concert hall, but no one
showed up! So we cancelled the show, and the next day we set up and
performed in front of the building. Nearly five thousand people came.
STACY: When you guys play live, you really get into it and attack your
instruments. How did the Ethiopian audiences react?
TERRIE: People there had never seen anything like it, so they responded
very directly. There was a lot of laughing and a lot of dancing. They were
the best kind of audience, really.
STACY: What did they think of Han Bennink, the improv jazz drummer who
opened for you?
TERRIE: The audiences all loved him. He's sixty years old, with grey hair
- but he's still drumming with incredible energy and imagination. Instead
of playing a drum set, he ended up performing on only a snare drum and a
wooden chair, which he used as a drum. That went over really well.
STACY: I love the idea of people laughing at your show.
TERRIE: A great many tragic things have happened in Ethiopia. But when you
go there you see that the people are extremely fun-loving despite that. In
other African countries there seems to be a more ingrained sense of misery
and confusion.
STACY: Why are things better in Ethiopia?
TERRIE: Well like I said before. Ethiopia is the only African country that
has never been colonized. So the culture is very strong. In addition,
their society is based on a very old branch of Christianity, which gives
people a certain framework. Everyone is responsible for everyone else -
they honestly believe that.
STACY: You're talking about Orthodox Christianity?
TERRIE: That's what it's called, although the Ethiopians are pretty
relaxed about the way it's practiced. It comes from the Coptic beliefs,
which have been around since 400 AD. Ethiopians were Christians hundreds
of yearcs before Christianity came to northern Europe. Besides that, the
Islamic tradition has been there from the very beginning. And there's
still a small Jewish population, and some people who hold onto animist
traditions as well. But none of these groups seem to get in each other's
way.
STACY: Didn't I hear that you performed on national television when you
were there?
TERRIE: That was fascinating. We'd been there just a few days when they
filmed us. After that, we were recognized everywhere.
STACY: I also heard that Kat, your drummer, sang a song in Ethiopian
during the broadcast.
TERRIE: We had prepared a few Ethiopian songs to play there. Jos and Kat
learned to sing the words phonetically. When you know just one word of
Ethiopian, people there are flabbergasted. If you sing a whole song,
you're a hero.
STACY: What did Kat sing?
TERRIE: It was a traditional love song, something people hear from the
time they're born. It's called "Tezeta", which means longing -
deep, deep longing - and it's full of double entendres. Originally it was
always sung by men. So when a white woman performed the song, singing the
words without knowing their precise meaning, like a child would - it had a
strange impact. People cheered after certain lines - they were really
supportive and excited. I think they got a lot of meaning out of it that
we didn't comprehend!
STACY: Were any of The Ex's songs more popular than others?
TERRIE: When we play in Europe or America, people respond differently to,
say, a straightforward rock song than they do to a weirder song with odd
tunings. But in Ethiopia, it was all new. The only noticeable change in
response was in reaction to our energy level - depending on how much dust
we were stirring up!
* * *
+++ That's all. Enjoy your
Summer. +++ News Letter no. 12 will arrive around October 2002. +++ Bye
for now. +++
Andy, Terrie, Luc, Sok,
Katherina, Colin, Grrrt
News Letter 13 will be available around late April 2003. Promise!
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