The Eritrean trumpeter Hermon Mehari blends jazz and native folklore on his third solo album Asmara, a nostalgic tribute to the motherland, accessible November 18th.
Asmara is undoubtedly the Eritrean-American trumpeter’s most intimate album. Named after the capital metropolis of Eritrea – a small nation on the coast of the Purple Sea, this opus allowed the jazzman to completely dive into the acquainted sounds of his childhood. Born within the US, Mehari studied American jazz and gained momentum with the band Various. In 2017, his first solo undertaking Bleu was well-received and showcased his simple present for the style. He then took jazz to different dimensions with A Change for the Dreamlike. Recorded in France in the course of the 2020 quarantine, it nonetheless featured a global and contrasted line-up, with the likes of French pianist Tony Tixier and electro producer Hugo LX. These collaborations took Mehari’s sound to downtempo and lo-fi hip-hop territory, and songs like “A Conversation With My Uncle” opened a window to the musician’s origins. And now, after Arc Fiction, a joint album with Italian pianist Alessandro Lanzoni, Hermon Mehari delivers Asmara.
His earlier songs paying homage to his homeland and the “introspective sensibility” of the second led the jazzman to dedicate a whole album to his origins. Finally, he explored the colourful conventional Eritrean sounds he grew up with in 8 private songs. Pleased with his Abyssinian roots on “Name Me Habesha”, Mehari remembers his late father within the dynamic “Who Dared It”, the English that means of his dad’s native metropolis’s identify, Mendefera. He additionally seems again on his journey to the motherland on the age of 5 on “I Bear in mind Eritrea”: “it’s pictures in my head and tales handed on to me by the years” recollects Mehari on this duo with New York vibraphonist Peter Schlamb.
The trumpeter introduces the one vocalist on Asmara as “a dwelling legend of Eritrean music”. Faytinga, an Asmara native singer and activist, blesses the album with “Tanafaqit”, a track filled with nostalgia. As Mehari explains, the songstress is exiled from her nation, and identical to him, she’d love to return house sooner or later. However “Eritrea is in a tough state of affairs, below dictatorship for over 30 years […] Individuals can’t communicate freely, and it’s one of many poorest nations on the earth. So that is additionally a message of hope”. Within the face of the continued battle, particularly within the Tigray area, the Asmara album is a love letter to Eritrea, aspiring for a greater future.
Asmara out November 18th through KOMOS.
Take heed to “Who Dared It” in our Songs of the Week playlist.
