Today we take a little journey into the wonderful world of Meklit and this amazing album.  There are a lot of great things going on throughout the nine tracks here.  The arrangements range from traditional to spiritual, jazz and folk and each one will have a different effect on you.    Meklit, who is from Ethiopia and currently based in California, has a rich voice that imparts feeling into everyone of these songs.  Now I am not going to claim that I understand most of the lyrics due to my own limitations on other languages  but I am hopeful that someday either the singer herself or someone else will explain them to me.  The tracks  though are artfully arranged and you can pick up on the emotion and feeling behind them just from that and the vocal styling.  

There are a couple songs that do have either all or mostly English lyrics and I picked one of them here for this review.  It begins on a really unique stringed instrument sound which I found out (from some of the liner notes) is a krar.  That instrument stays throughout, setting a pulsing rhythm that gives a feeling of running just in front of the vocals.   There is a gentle percussion and bass accompaniment filling out the musical space along with an alluring saxophone (I had to listen a few times to catch it…but it was worth it for sure).   A very interesting piece of music and one that will stick with you. 

Musicians on this are: Meklit (vocals and krar), Howard Wiley (tenor and alto saxophone), Kibrom Birhane (microcosm), Marco Peris Coppola (percussion), Sam Bevan (upright bass and guitar) and Colin Douglas (drums).  

You can check out more of the music and information on the Bandcamp page https://meklitsings.bandcamp.com/album/a-piece-of-infinity

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And please think about purchasing this song after you listen – streaming music does not pay much even times a thousand…

Let me know you think!