Gili Yalo (2017)
10 tracks, 41 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes
Diaspora music as a concept is something I find extremely interesting. The experiences of people who have grown up in one culture and living in a different one, or to have been born and raised by people of one culture while in the geographies of another, lend them a unique outlook on the world and a unique approach to the meanings and makings of music.
Gili Yalo’s self-titled debut album is a great reflection of that. Born to a Jewish family in Ethiopia, his family travelled by foot to the refugee camps in Sudan to escape religious persecution when Yalo was five years old. From there, he was brought to Tel Aviv as part of Israel’s Operation Moses. And so, growing up, he was immersed in Israeli life, and music: he listened to all the popular Israeli singers, and became addicted to funk, soul, rock and reggae from the Americas. He had little time for Ethiopian culture; it was, after all, the country that rejected him and his people. But then, a little older, he started to notice the systematic and structural prejudice against Ethiopian Jews in Israel. He got angry, and his anger manifested in refusing to be put down by racism, but to rise from it: he began to embrace his Ethiopian heritage like he hadn’t before. He polished up his Amharic and started listening to as much Ethiopian music as he could, mostly from the Éthiopiques series (as have we, here and here). “I discovered lively, exciting music with impressive progressions…on one hand, the beats are very, very authentic and characteristic of Ethiopia, and on the other hand, the scale is very minor – sad songs with a beat, and people dance as if there were no tomorrow. I connected with this music,” he later told Haaretz.
He was already a musician, but this dive into Ethiopian jazz and other styles from the 60s and 70s changed the way he thought about music, and when he went solo, it was obvious what direction he would take. His music reflects that cross-cultural life. Vintage Ethiogroove is at the heart of most of the tracks on Gili Yalo, but when he allows his other influences to take the fore, they come with as much skill, love and deep understanding, meaning that no matter which direction the album takes, it’s always down the grooviest avenue possible.
I’ve been following Gili Yalo for about six years now, just as he’d started to pick up steam as a solo artist. It was a little scrappy at first, but by the time this album came out, his sound was honed to perfection. When I reviewed it for Songlines at the time, I said ‘Play it loud and you’ll feel like the coolest person alive – after Gili Yalo, of course,’ and listening back to it almost two years later, I can confirm that it’s still the case. After keeping him on my radar for so long, it was great to see him live at WOMAD in July – his first ever UK date; he smashed it, of course, but that was expected. Listen to this debut album and revel in it: it was a whole life in the making.
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