RAS DASHEN DUO

V’ahavta: Ras Dashen Duo
Abate Berihun: saxophone and vocals
Yitzhak Yedid: piano

V’ahavta (“and thou shalt love”) is a new album by the Ras Dashen Duo. This performance by the duo is comprised of original musical works based upon texts from the scriptures and is influenced by the melodies of the kesim, Ethiopian Jewish priests.

The Ras Dashen Duo performs original local jazz, combining traditional Ethiopian music and song and free improvisation.

“And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” is Israeli blues, written in the aftermath of the painful scenes of demonstrations by Ethiopian immigrants. Abate sings the passage that, as the rabbinic sage Rabbi Akiva stated, is the essence of the entire Torah, in three languages: Amharic, Hebrew and Ge’ez.


Te’fila (10.49)
Improvisation (8.00)
Maragne (6.25)
Yerushalem (9.58)
Tezeta (5.37)
Shabehi (9.25)
Terara Tenedo (5.59)
V’ahavta (2.19)



For nearly two decades I have been following Abate Berihun—a saxophone virtuoso with an extraordinary deep, controlled and expressive voice. These are rare abilities, endowed with sensitivity, power and warmth. For me, Abate is the deepest embodiment of the African spirit, of soul singing, of the soul of ancient, pre-Mishnaic Judaism, in whose “blackness” one finds Africa, episodes of journey and wandering, coexistence of Jews and Christians, African and tribal ritual, and touches of jazz and songs of black America.

Almost any composer or composition would benefit from collaboration with this great artist, who represents the Ethiopian-Jewish genius with power and splendor beyond compare. I was thus overjoyed and surprised when Abate Berihun presented the fruit of his work with composer Yitzhak Yedid to me. These artists complement one another and the result of their collaboration is fascinating.

Yitzhak Yedid is a composer with a very broad array of inspirational sources. He always creates out of a deep affinity for cultural interpretation, emotional expression and musical investigation to the depths of the soul, together with an awareness of the colorful sounds emerging from diverse cultural collectives.

The encounter of these artists constitutes a summit meeting offering a mature, powerful and utterly unique expression of the virtuosity of each. The appearance of this jazz-blues album on the Israeli cultural scene reminds one of magical moments in the founding of American blues and jazz at the beginning of the 20th century: here one finds a rhapsody in brilliant black: clear, colorful and with an inner glow, a shout of joy for life and peace!

Yitzhak Yedid’s footprint in its broad, multi-cultural spread, is apparent in all of his extensive and impressive musical repertoire, here meeting the infinite virtuosity of Abate Berihun. The connection between the two artists and their wondrous interaction is not only a meeting between jazz and blues, between saxophone and piano, between African and other musical worlds—but also a link between the wind, a spring of living water and the majesty of the desert.

The work’s dialogue stems from a place of freedom, whose boundaries extend, encompassing other styles. Yitzhak Yedid’s role as an energetic composer, who writes and performs within a broad context of combinations and changes, is juxtaposed with Abate’s great vocal and instrumental virtuosity. The results are brilliant and moving.

Three particularly lovely pearls are the works: “Yerushalem,” “Shabehi” and “V’ahavta.”

The work “Yerushalem” is comprised of Jerusalem melodies from the Ethiopian tradition, interwoven with a transition to the song “Samahati” (based upon the Psalm 122). Hearing “Yerushalem” reminds one of the march of Ethiopian Jewry toward the heavenly Jerusalem, the suffering and agony they endured, and the sanctity they attributed to it. There is emotional turmoil in the transition of this work from an anguished opening to the very refreshing and rhythmic rendition of the traditional eastern melody for the psalm “samahti be’omrim li” (Psalm 122: “I rejoiced with those who said to me: let us go to the house of the Lord”). Vis à vis Rahamim Amar’s melody and Daklon’s rendition from the 1980s in Tslilei Hakerem, this represent a gift from the immigration of the 1990s and 2000s of Ethiopian Jewry—a crown of black gold, as it were, that removes the song from its original context, raising it to a new position as soul music.

“Shabehi yerushalayim” in the familiar melody of Avihu Medina, based upon the Sephardic rendition of the psalm, already a cornerstones of eastern Jewish music, here receives an amazing African arrangement, combining passages in Amharic and shouts of Hallelujah and Amen, almost a re-canonization as sacred scripture.

Hearing “V’ahavta l’re’akha kamokha” (“And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”) in Amharic, Hebrew and Ge’ez—reminds me of the voice of revelation at Sinai: to once again receive the ethical, poetic and musical commandment from the mouth of courage.

And there is courage—and joy—in this work.

I drank this music. The messages of peace, love and joy intertwine in a spirit of freedom, eastern and Ethiopian makamat intertwine, embellished with jazz and blues improvisation, creating the New Jerusalem that is within us, that obliges us to seek a world of goodness.

Prof. Haviva Pedaya