Debo Band

Reviews From The Press:

• Boston Phoenix - Jan. 26 2010

  Last spring, Danny Mekonnen and Jonah Rapino led Boston's fledgling Ethiopian pop group Debo Band straight to Addis Ababa. They played a local festival, made friends with nightclub owners, and found an Ethiopian Airlines deal for a free trip down the coast to Tanzania. There, they hung out with expatriated Black Panthers, took giraffe safaris, and met organizers from one of the biggest music festivals in Africa, Zanzibar's Sauti za Busara.

• Boston Globe - Jan. 10, 2010

  CAMBRIDGE - Just before midnight on a brisk night at the Western Front, an unassuming club outside Central Square, a refreshing scene is unfolding. Soon after a handsome man croons a love song in Amharic (Ethiopia’s official language) over the band’s chunky ’70s funk riffs, a rapper gets up on stage and drops fluid rhymes also in his native tongue. Other times the musicians lock into long instrumental grooves solely in service to the party vibe.

• Tadias magazine - Jan. 6 2010

  The Ethio groove ensemble known as Debo Band, whose signature music explores the unique sounds that filled the dance floors of “Swinging Addis” in the ‘60s and ‘70s, has won the Boston Music Awards’ under the category of “International Music Act of the Year.”

• Tadias online magazine March 14, 2009

  "Debo Band has been cultivating a small but enthusiastic following in the loft spaces, neighborhood bars, and church basements of Boston for the past three years. But very soon, they will be playing for a much larger audience. In May, Debo will travel to Ethiopia to perform at the Ethiopian Music Festival in the capital, Addis Ababa. Their engagement is supported by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through USArtists International with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Now the band is getting ready with a busy schedule of hometown shows and will perform for the first time in front of audiences in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC."

• From the Archive: Boston Herald Article Jan. 17, 2008

  "Saxophonist Danny Mekonnen was surprised when he realized after settling in Boston five years ago that New England might be where he’d find his musical roots. “I didn’t expect it,” said the 27-year-old Paris, Texas, native. “It was really exciting.” The roots? Ethiopian. And while Ethiopian music isn’t exactly bumping up against Chris Brown, Fergie and Alicia Keys on the radio in Boston, Mekonnen discovered there are more than a few people here who will fly like bees to this slinky North African sound."