Awesome Tapes from Africa is at it again! (“It” being bringing you awesome tapes. From Africa. Well, actually this album will be available as an LP/CD/digital release, but you get it. It was, at one time, a tape in Africa.) This time around, the release in question is Awalom Gebremariam’s 2007 album Desdes, coming atcha straight outta Eritrea.
The story: Awalom Gebremariam is an artist living in North Carolina and working at a restaurant, after a lengthy journey from Eritrea to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. In 2007, before leaving his hometown, the Eritrean capital of Asmara, he recorded Desdes. However, over the course of his complicated, several-years-long journey, he never received any of the money for his cassette and CD sales, and he never knew how much of a splash his music had made. Awesome Tapes from Africa came across the album after friend-of-the-label and well-known fixed gear bike athlete Patrick Seabase traveled to Eritrea to film Asmawa, a documentary about a biking trip, heard the record basically EVERYWHERE, and brought it back to the US. AFTA posted about the release on their blog, a North Carolinian agency that aids asylum-seekers saw the post, hooked the label up with Awalom, and the rest is soon-to-be musical history.
Desdes will be available stateside on April 15.