Citizen Azmari. Ilana Webster-Kogen
(fourteen measures in total), the band changes meter, moving into a 12/8, including the three brass instruments (saxophone, trombone, and trumpet) plus the guitar and bass (see Le Gendre 2012 or Maultsby 2006: 297 for an explanation of the soul convention of transition from 4/4 to 12/8 to heighten syncopation). While Rada sings “My name is Aunt Sarah/ Saffronia/ Sweet Thing /Peaches,” the strings outline the skeletal melody in eighth and sixteenth notes, and the brass play ascending minor seconds. Between the triple pulse and the minor second notes, this bridge evokes the hemitonic pentatonic modes of Ethio-jazz, played in 6/8. Therefore, the melodic effect is jazz verse and Ethiopian chorus. The brass section, prominent in soul arrangements (Maultsby 2006: 274), forms a sonic barrier between the two styles.
The alternation between soul-jazz and Ethio-jazz continues for three verses, and the fourth verse (Peaches) comes in as funk. Portia Maultsby defines the transition from soul to funk as “the interlocking of the drum pattern and a two-bar bass line, counter or contrasting guitar, keyboard and horn riffs, and a vocalist singing in a gospel style” (2006: 297). The brass instrumentalists continue to play for this verse, but they switch to 4/4, with the saxophone accenting the pickup of each phrase. As Rada reaches a crescendo and incorporates rougher timbre, the combination of textural density and dynamic climax brings the song to a frenzied, affectively powerful end, similar to Simone’s version in the feeling of climax, but perhaps with her non-Ethiopian band relying too much on instrumental dynamics to bring about that climax.
Rada first recorded a Simone song in 2015, but she has been paying homage to Simone frequently in concert, the most widely circulated example online being her performance at Hulugeb in December 2013.17 In this rare instance, Rada stepped off-script briefly to explain the song to her audience in Hebrew. An audience member who has heard Rada introduce Simone’s “Feeling Good” in English, complete with demanding that the audience answer the question “How do you feel?” in English even in Israel, might be surprised to hear Rada taking such a pedagogical approach to a song. But for the audience at Hulugeb, many of whom were Ethiopian-Israelis not conversant in English, Rada’s careful explanation of the premise of “Four Women” and its multiple interpretations gave the audience a sense of the gravity of the subject matter. Whether in the dramatic case of Hulugeb or anywhere else on the festival circuit, it comes across that Rada takes this repertoire seriously and that it illuminates the Ethiopian-Israeli experience.
Rada does not offer onstage the full-throated repudiations of racism and occupation that left-wing Israelis espouse in protest songs, but her musical style itself borders on a political agenda, since the linking of soul and funk to Ethio-jazz transpires in “Four Women” through the narrative of violence against black women. She keeps her positioning subtle: she sings in English, does not usually mention Israel onstage as that might alienate her left-leaning audience,18 and connects Ethiopia to the United States via modal brass and triple meter. Yet Rada’s method works as a maneuvering through the Afrodiasporic myths of citizenship because it is understated. In “Four Women,” she forgoes a discourse of identity politics that has left the Israeli electoral system crippled. Instead she draws from Afrodiasporic influences that young Ethiopian-Israelis recognize in their own lives.
CUT ’N’ MIX COMPOSITION: “SORRIES,” “LIFE HAPPENS,” AND “BAZI”
In the video to “Sorries,” Rada walks around the Old City of Jerusalem with four members of her band.19 One immediately notices irony in the performance of reggae in the Old City, since reggae reconfigures “Zion” as none other than Ethiopia (see Raboteau 2014). Not that the song is explicitly political; the lyrics in English are about a romantic relationship, and the symbolic power of the song’s performance unfold entirely at the level of musical style. To understand Rada’s original material, and particularly three original songs from Rada’s album—“Sorries,” “Life Happens,” and “Bazi”—I describe some key musical vocabularies of blackness that, for Ethiopian-Israelis, offer alternative narratives of belonging.
Ethiopian-Israeli musicians frequently deploy reggae (and dub) references to Rastafarian imagery as a way of accruing cultural capital with Caribbean subcultures and among Israeli audiences. In Rada’s case, the negotiation of diasporic identity transpires entirely at the level of musical style, her repertoire constituting her public voice; her referencing of reggae is an effective framing device. At the same time, a number of songs from her album borrow from elements of Ethiopian traditional music and from funk to position Rada and Ethio-soul within a continuum of Afrodiasporic musical styles. Her compositional style might be best understood as a variant of the methodology of cut ’n’ mix, a style that Hebdige characterized in the 1980s as a musical dialogue between African American and Caribbean cultures. Hebdige identifies the roots, musical bloodlines, and influences in reggae as coming from a mixture of African American popular music, African “revivals” (see Herskovits 1961), and Rastafarian ritual, propelled by the sociopolitical milieu of recently independent Jamaica (1987). In this spirit, Rada’s syncretic style connects varied Afrodiasporic cultures to her own personal narrative; she draws elements from the musical cultures to which she actively connects herself, which carry a lineage of experience that parallel the Ethiopian-Israeli experience.
Looking at three of Rada’s original songs, I will demonstrate that her cut ’n’ mix compositional style is part of an exercise in what Gilroy calls “anti-antiessentialism” (1993: 99), or flexible movement between essentializing and deessentializing the features of black culture. Gilroy contends that in black music, a set of vernaculars takes the place of widespread literacy to which slaves were barred access. Those vernaculars can be mobilized to signify blackness, and they can also constitute pastiche, and Rada uses the formalizing of those vernaculars as the basis for her own Atlantic blackness. Her compositional style presents a sort of canonized vocabulary, or textuality of blackness. Reggae, Azmari, and funk all serve as building blocks, and when performed under a singular umbrella they render her conversant in black Atlantic performance.
Here I look at three songs from the album that characterize Rada’s style in unique ways. First, “Sorries,” which bears the strongest reggae influence on the album, with the verses emphasizing the offbeat rhythmically and brass playing in unison (Audio file 3). Second, “Life Happens,” which incorporates a massenqo (Ethiopian spike fiddle) and Ethiopian modality (Audio file 4). Third, “Bazi,” which has the strongest funk influence on the album, funk forming the primary structural foundation of the song (Audio file 5). This combination of funk, reggae, and Azmari music, in addition to soul and Ethio-jazz in Rada’s other work, contributes to an overall sound—Ethio-soul—that articulates an image of blackness frequently associated with otherness.
The essence of the cut ’n’ mix style, what Hebdige calls an absolute reliance on “versioning” for creativity, is on full display in “Sorries,” a song that traverses four musical genres in as many minutes. Following a brief drum solo, it begins with a pentatonic brass passage in 6/8 reminiscent of Ethio-jazz. The brass then transitions into a four-measure section in stop-time, the instruments playing in rhythmic unison. Next is a transition into 4/4 reggae rhythm, with the guitars playing on the offbeat for the duration of the verses and the brass playing in unison on the pickup between measures. Each verse lasts four measures, followed by two measures of brass, with the cycle repeating. After twelve measures, Rada sings a soul-style bridge with vocals overlaid for eight measures. The rapid transition every four measures or so from Ethio-jazz to R&B to reggae to jazz to soul defines Rada’s syncretic style.
Alongside this musical montage of styles, the “Sorries” video demonstrates the degree to which Rada’s potentially intense political statements emerge entirely at the nonverbal level (and sometimes at the visual level). The song lyrics contain no hints of subversion or protest typical of the genres she references (see Le Gendre 2012), but the video makes a statement anyway. Part of her commentary comes from choosing this song in the first place for a video staged in the Old City, the ownership of which is contested by Israelis and Palestinians. As Rada walks around the Old City—the closest analogue to the biblical Zion—playing reggae, she implies a Zion-Zion connection that reads as a multilayered commentary on exclusion and public space. This reading might only be readily apparent to someone who is aware of the problematic existence of black bodies in Israeli public life. By choosing the only song on her album that invokes