Awesome Tapes From Africa to release album by Eritrean artist Awalom Gebremariam

Awesome Tapes From Africa to release album by Eritrean artist Awalom Gebremariam

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.

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