Samuel Yirga is a talented, young jazz pianist from Addis Ababa. His music is indebted to the “Golden Age” of Ethiopian music, that funky mish-mash of Western jazz and East African folk styles that was popular in “swinging” Addis before the 1974 Communist revolution. However his style is even more cosmopolitan, grabbing at all sorts of Carribbean rhythms and inflections as well as the work of modern jazz players. There’s a smoothness to his style that shares an aesthetic with players like Keith Jarrett or George Winston: Yirga’s got a very clean, fluid way about playing . . .
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