The Guardian
Chris Michael
Friday 6 February 2009

The first music that greets every visitor to northern Ethiopia is called Tigrinya. It’s a mix of James Brown-style horn riffs, loud vocal trilling, and the same beat – da-DUM (pause), da-DUM (pause) – on every single song. Tigrinya is an acquired taste, and arguably best experienced on blown speakers, at tinnitus-inducing volume, in a bus that smells vaguely of vomit.

It is just such a bus that makes the 16-hour journey from Addis to Arba Minch, home to the Thousand Stars festival. Billed as Ethiopia’s Glastonbury, Thousand Stars is three days of music in the heart of the Rift Valley. It would not, I was assured, involve any Tigrinya. Indeed, it seemed safe to assume your standard world-music lineup: a healthy contingent of Tourés, Diabatés and maybe a wailing guest kora solo from Damon Albarn.

I could hardly have been more wrong. Not only were there no stars at Thousand Stars, there were no food stalls, no DJs, no Peter-Gabriel approved “world music” artists noodling on the ngoni ba. No bands perform here. Instead, once a year, the organisers scrounge a few vans and drive around Ethiopia’s remote Omo region with letters of invitation to tribespeople, asking if they want to play at the festival, held at Arba Minch’s football arena. The tribes who agree – 55 this year, including two from Kenya – pile into the vans and head for the festival. And then, for the benefit of the other tribes, 50 or so western faranji tourists and a few thousand middle-class Ethiopians, they pick up a cordless microphone, walk on stage and perform songs and dances few people have ever seen. Read more.