Souvenirs

世界中のピアニストからも愛されたエチオピアの修道女。2023年にこの世を去った彼女の初となるボーカルアルバムが登場。60年代初頭から母国の孤児院に資金を供給するためにレコーディングしてきた彼女の作品は、エリック・サティ、ドビュッシー、コプト式エチオピア教会の典礼音楽、そしてエチオピアの伝統音楽から影響を受けた唯一無二の楽曲。今作は1977年から1985年にかけてレコーディングされていた楽曲を収録したアルバムで初となるボーカル作品となります。窓の外の鳥のさえずり声/ピアノのベンチのきしむ音/彼女の指がボタンを押す音などレコーディング中の身近な音がそのまま収録されています。彼女は今作が世界中の多くの人に届くことを夢に見ながら2023年3月にこの世を去りました。生誕100年を記念して彼女の家族が協力して今作がリリースされます。

Ethiopian pianist and composer Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou’s music has such a unique emotional quality that it seems to inhabit a universe apart from all others. Guebrou lived a life of equal parts intensity and calm before her death in 2023, suffering repression and imprisonment connected to various wars from early in life and after becoming a nun and committing herself to quiet religious devotion. This duality shows up in the yearning melancholy of her music, with songs that reflect the sorrows of a troubled, warring society as much as they celebrate the solitary beauty of the individual spirit. While her solo piano recordings evoke these feelings wordlessly, the 2024 posthumous release Souvenirs is the first album from Guebrou to include a component of sung vocals on every track. The eight selections that make up the album were recorded to cassette at her family home between 1977 and 1985. There are artifacts of this recording style that add to the album’s cozy charm. With the entire sonic picture being captured live and with minimal miking, the vocals often feel slightly buried in the ambience of the room, especially on the bright and reassuring “Tenkou! Why Feel Sorry?” or intertwined with the circular piano melodies of “Where Is the Highway of Thought?” There are moments when external sounds drift into the recordings, reminding us that Guebrou’s heavenly meditations were indeed happening right here on Earth. Through the tape hiss and occasional chirp of birds outside her window, Souvenirs delivers the same kind of austere, floating loveliness of so many of Guebrou’s other albums. Her piano figures wander and bend, comfortably wriggling themselves in and out of various scales and applications. “Clouds Moving on the Sky” combines the unlikely elements of dirge-like traditional folk, the lingering emotional atmospheres of Debussy, and a playing style not too far from the boozy saloon stumbling of ragtime piano. She returns to themes of country and home throughout the album on songs like “Ethiopia My Motherland” and “Don’t Forget Your Country.” Though its only eight songs long, Souvenirs is as valuable a chapter in Guebrou’s discography as any, with the focus on singing offering another angle on her inimitable and intensely moving artistry. ~ Fred Thomas