propelled by the sociopolitical milieu of recently independent Jamaica (1987). In this spirit, Rada’s syncretic style connects varied Afrodiasporic cultures to her own personal narrative; she draws elements from the musical cultures to which she actively connects herself, which carry a lineage of experience that parallel the Ethiopian-Israeli experience.
Looking at three of Rada’s original songs, I will demonstrate that her cut ’n’ mix compositional style is part of an exercise in what Gilroy calls “anti-antiessentialism” (1993: 99), or flexible movement between essentializing and deessentializing the features of black culture. Gilroy contends that in black music, a set of vernaculars takes the place of widespread literacy to which slaves were barred access. Those vernaculars can be mobilized to signify blackness, and they can also constitute pastiche, and Rada uses the formalizing of those vernaculars as the basis for her own Atlantic blackness. Her compositional style presents a sort of canonized vocabulary, or textuality of blackness. Reggae, Azmari, and funk all serve as building blocks, and when performed under a singular umbrella they render her conversant in black Atlantic performance.
Here I look at three songs from the album that characterize Rada’s style in unique ways. First, “Sorries,” which bears the strongest reggae influence on the album, with the verses emphasizing the offbeat rhythmically and brass playing in unison (Audio file 3). Second, “Life Happens,” which incorporates a massenqo (Ethiopian spike fiddle) and Ethiopian modality (Audio file 4). Third, “Bazi,” which has the strongest funk influence on the album, funk forming the primary structural foundation of the song (Audio file 5). This combination of funk, reggae, and Azmari music, in addition to soul and Ethio-jazz in Rada’s other work, contributes to an overall sound—Ethio-soul—that articulates an image of blackness frequently associated with otherness.
The essence of the cut ’n’ mix style, what Hebdige calls an absolute reliance on “versioning” for creativity, is on full display in “Sorries,” a song that traverses four musical genres in as many minutes. Following a brief drum solo, it begins with a pentatonic brass passage in 6/8 reminiscent of Ethio-jazz. The brass then transitions into a four-measure section in stop-time, the instruments playing in rhythmic unison. Next is a transition into 4/4 reggae rhythm, with the guitars playing on the offbeat for the duration of the verses and the brass playing in unison on the pickup between measures. Each verse lasts four measures, followed by two measures of brass, with the cycle repeating. After twelve measures, Rada sings a soul-style bridge with vocals overlaid for eight measures. The rapid transition every four measures or so from Ethio-jazz to R&B to reggae to jazz to soul defines Rada’s syncretic style.
Alongside this musical montage of styles, the “Sorries” video demonstrates the degree to which Rada’s potentially intense political statements emerge entirely at the nonverbal level (and sometimes at the visual level). The song lyrics contain no hints of subversion or protest typical of the genres she references (see Le Gendre 2012), but the video makes a statement anyway. Part of her commentary comes from choosing this song in the first place for a video staged in the Old City, the ownership of which is contested by Israelis and Palestinians. As Rada walks around the Old City—the closest analogue to the biblical Zion—playing reggae, she implies a Zion-Zion connection that reads as a multilayered commentary on exclusion and public space. This reading might only be readily apparent to someone who is aware of the problematic existence of black bodies in Israeli public life. By choosing the only song on her album that invokes the other Zion—the Zion that means Ethiopia—she inserts blackness into one of the world’s most controversial sacred spaces.
The methodology of making a statement exclusively through sonic cues and visual signifiers—making musical style her public voice—continues across Rada’s album. “Life Happens” is a polished music video, and her most viewed song on YouTube by a factor of ten.20 The musical style and visual imagery illustrate a complex set of multidirectional influences, particularly through instrumentation and harmonic modulation. The song can be broken down again into a collage style: first, a two-measure Ethio-jazz exposition that repeats (with the four-measure section opening each new verse, a massenqo featured in the second verse). Next, she sings a four-line verse in minor key. Finally, the chorus modulates to major for four measures, eventually cycling back to the Ethio-jazz section, with a brief gospel-style vocal passage at the song’s end. The collage effect repeats itself in virtually all of her original songs, and indeed lends itself to the music-video genre.
The imagery mirrors Rada’s songwriting style, displaying multidirectional Afrodiasporic sensibility. As the video opens in a warehouse, the camera pans in to Rada playing a drum kit and dressed in the style of 1970s Swinging Addis (see Falceto 2002). Next, at 0.06, she is wearing a disco-style silver dress and playing a saxophone, and at 0.10 she is wearing glasses and playing the keyboard with one hand. At 0.13 she wears purple and plays the flute, which sounds like an Ethiopian washint. We appear to be moving through decades chronologically; at 0.16 she is wearing a jumpsuit, and at 0.18 she is holding a massenqo and wearing West African prints and headdress. At 0.20 she is wearing an ’80s-style fedora, playing the bass. The images of Rada from different eras, playing different instruments, in different styles of ethnic dress, offer a collage of multidirectional influence coming from Ethiopia and the United States. The video expresses her combination of eras, regions, tone colors, and melodic structures through an easy-to-grasp visual medium.
In contrast to the collage form of the other songs, “Bazi” sticks faithfully to funk. It begins with a fuzzy guitar and a bass muted by a wah-wah effect (see Le Gendre 2012: 137 for a clear explanation of the effect of the pedal on guitar timbre), moving quickly into a brass section playing in unison, to be followed by a bass line reminiscent of funk trailblazing group Parliament. Formally, “Bazi” establishes a funk groove through the bass, via a low-pitched, rhythmic melody that responds heterophonically to the other melodic instruments throughout (see Le Gendre 2012: 106 for the role of the bass in establishing groove in funk songs). The lyrics are about love and heartbreak, but the language does not convey the double meaning that in many funk songs substitutes sexual relations for unfulfilled political desire. Rada has, in a context removed from the black Atlantic, used iconic funk vernacular—fuzzy guitar, bassline as parallel melody, brass in unison, and contrapuntal melodies—to sound African American. Table 1.2 suggests that Rada and her band employ the lexicon of African American musical style to create substantially different effects from one song to another. Individual effects may not be especially meaningful, but the composite demonstrates fluency with a variety of Afrodiasporic approaches to composition and melody, instrumentation and ornamentation, and flow and timbre.
In each song, Rada uses the main signposts of African American popular style—call-and-response, flow, articulated attack, and embellished coda—to create divergent effects or to signify a variety of styles. Not included in table 1.2 but apparent to any listener is the subject matter of song texts, namely personal relationships. Among the Afrodiasporic musical styles that contributed to the civil rights movement in the United States (jazz, soul, funk) that Rada references, lyrics constitute an explicit part of musicians’ political message (and the part that scholars focus on disproportionately). Soul and funk, and later, reggae, emphasized themes of freedom and dignity for black activists, and song titles like “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” and “(To Be) Young Gifted and Black” complemented songs about personal relationships that stand in for political struggle like “I Will Survive” or “What’s Become of the Brokenhearted.” The absence of explicitly political themes in her lyrics not only distinguishes Rada from the politically conscious black music that she references directly but also protects her from having to engage directly in Israeli politics. By avoiding any topics of national interest, and indeed even the language of those debates (Hebrew), she frames Ethiopian-Israelis beyond those debates.
Rada’s international prominence and rapid ascent demonstrate that diverse audiences respond to her cut ’n’ mix approach to songwriting, made up of apolitical English song texts and a collage of Afrodiasporic
