Hello Hallo

Hallo Dawe
24" x 12"
oil on canvas, 2012

I like strange recordings and the music on this cassette by Hallo Dawe that I found on Awesome Tapes From Africa certainly qualifies. Maybe it's not the recording that's so strange but the reproduction of it is perhaps. The playback doesn't seem quite right as it appears to be out of key and a bit too fast, maybe even more than a bit. Dawe's voice seems to have an unnatural high pitch that I really like–no matter if it's natural or mechanically (by accident) induced. There have been stranger things produced in Ethiopia. This cassette features Oromo music and that's right away all the information I have concerning this cassette, the recording, the singer, the circumstances. Trying to find out more on line proves a very confusing task. At this moment I'm not even sure the singer's name is actually Hallo Dawe as it may possibly be the title of the cassette (it sure sounds—on track 1 of side A—that the lyrics include the words Hallo Dawe) but it could be both, it certainly doesn't help that I don't know the Oromo language. Somewhere on line this recording had the year 1977 tagged to it, and that seems about right to me.