Jorga Mesfin – The Kindest One

The saxophonist Jorga Mesfin grew up in a house full of jazz records, immersed in the melodies of Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and the organist Jimmy Smith, the dolorous vocalist and krar player Kassa Tessema who was the focus of one of those Éthiopiques volumes which recuperated the efforts of Amha Records and Kaifa Records during the golden age of Ethiopian music and brought Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou to global attention, but most of all the percussive vibrations and syncretic fusions of the great instrumentalist Mulatu Astatke. A somewhat reluctant recipient of the first Éthiopiques volume devoted to a single musician, the vibraphonist and conga drummer Astatke is regarded as the father of Ethio-jazz for combining the pentatonic scale and asymmetrical rhythms of traditional Amharic music with Western forms and his penchant for Latinate percussion, the elder statesman coming to serve as something of a mentor to Mesfin as he embarked on his own professional career at the age of just seventeen years old.

Mesfin has collaborated with other Ethiopian icons like Mahmoud Ahmed and Aster Aweke as a longtime resident of Astatke’s stylish bar the African Jazz Village in Addis Ababa, where on a typical night he might blend the opening chords of ‘My Favorite Things’ by John Coltrane with the tender strains of Ahmed and Gerawork Nekatibeb’s folk classic ‘Wey Fikir’. His sister Munit Mesfin is also a musician, an acclaimed singer best known for her partnership with the German guitarist Jörg Pfeil. Having initially studied the piano, Mesfin’s sound on the saxophone is equal parts Coltrane, the Ethiopian tenor player Getatchew Mekurya who bent his instrument to emulate shellela warrior chants, and Emahoy whose spellbinding runs sit somewhere between the winding repetitions and waif melodies of Erik Satie and the tremulous blues of Billy Strayhorn and Ellington, earning her her the dubious title of the ‘honky-tonk nun’ while she remains lauded as one of the most distinctive pianists in all of contemporary classical music.

In 2004 while studying at Emory University in the United States, the aspiring musician founded the fusion band Wudasse with Fasil Wuhib on bass, Teferi Assefa on drums, Ahsa Ahla on other percussion and Dale Saunders on the guitar, with their solitary album Selam released in 2006. A couple of years later Jorga Mesfin worked alongside Vijay Iyer on the score for Teza, an Ethiopian coming-of-age narrative which depicts the creeping horrors and crushing brutality of the Derg regime, whose music won awards at the Carthage Film Festival and the Dubai International Film Festival. He was part of the Kafa Beanz who blended Ethiopian hip hop and neo soul and featured on a collaborative record by Takana Miyamoto and Kirk Whalum, and he has continued to compose for films including the athletics drama Min Alesh? and Enchained, a legal drama which evokes old oral traditions while dabbling in magical realism. Yet his new album The Kindest One, a reworked and remastered version of a suite which was recorded in Atlanta and released as The Kind Ones back in 2007, arrives now on the Addis Ababa and Stockholm outpost Muzikawi billed as his solo debut.

Playing saxophone and keys, on ‘Thanksgiving (ም​ስ​ጋ​ና​)’, the opening track from The Kindest One, elegant cascades of piano flow down over the slippery, roiling and runaway patterns of Ali Eric Barr’s djembe drum, before Mesfin’s soprano and the percussive shakers of Teferi Assefa give the track a celestial shimmer. On the brief follow-up ‘The Portal (ዘ ፖርታል)’ smears of fairground accordion courtesy of Takana Miyamoto ratchet over the resounding echo of a kick drum, and ‘Longing (ሎንጊንግ)’ carries the melody while upping the tempo, a slinky groove built upon the shifting sands of the djembe and a plummy, springy bass line as Mesfin’s saxophone airs a flighty and wafting discursion.

While Mamaniji Azanyah plucks the double bass with aplomb, ‘Pilgrimage (ጉዞ)’ foregrounds the electric bass of Fasil Wuhib, whose iterative downwards tread is accompanied by a cortege of increasingly arhythmic hand clap percussion. Then the title track of The Kindest One opens with a specious soprano glimmer, soft-brushed percussive eddies, spare bass throbs and the whistling of winds, a watery rush over silt and reeds, the pouring out of one’s cup in an act of deep benevolence and communal whimsy. The horn becomes ever more ebullient and emphatic as percussive rolls and clatters plus the gentle nods of the bass imbue the track with a bluesy undercurrent.

The soprano is more moodily inquisitive on ‘Tizita (ትዝታ)’, the Amharic name for a musical style which trades in themes of nostalgia whether it be childhood memories, lost loves or a severed connection to once treasured homes and lands. Venturing down alleyways and pressing into the corners of the composition while a trumpet skirts behind in fading counterpoint, droning organ keys buttress the brass until a walking bass line scatters the streets leaving the horn to play a more restrained, somewhat elegiac melody on the margins. ‘Spring Water (የምንጭ ውሃ)’ is another slinkily gushing track, with claves tapping out a rhythm and chimes keeping time as the woodwinds swoop and soar over the canvas, Mesfin adopting a highly lyrical tone through open voicings as the piece shrugs to a close.

And ‘Ye Abay Gizo (የአባይ ጉዞ)’ which closes The Kindest One is another arabesque, where the high wail of the soprano saxophone is soon accompanied by serpentine shakers and the stately yet queasy throb of an accordion as drum rolls and the djembe rumble on in the distance. A trip down the Nile characterised by the stacking of chairs and a seasick disembarkation, after the communal throb and throng of the album ‘Ye Abay Gizo (የአባይ ጉዞ)’ stands as a solitary call to prayer, striking a note of ominous portent as Jorga Mesfin and The Kindest One depart having left a searing impression.