Rachel Brown. (PHOTOGRAPH BY SHERVIN LAINEZ)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Wednesday, June 17th, 2015
New York (TADIAS) — The New Yorker Magazine has a great highlight of Ethiopian American singer and song-writer Rachel Brown who is releasing a new EP this week called The Band. This is Rachel’s second album following her 2012 debut EP Building Castles.
The multicultural artist and Harvard graduate is the daughter of Ethiopian-born wedding-fashion designer Amsale Aberra. “Brown, a singer-songwriter from New York who is just five years out of college, got serious about music midway through getting her degree,” The New Yorker notes. “Her mother is from Ethiopia and she’s spent time in Bermuda, and when she sings she releases uncanny timbres. Her voice is not as unusual as the ragged croak of Macy Gray but often possesses the walnut burr of Erykah Badu and the lightness of Norah Jones. Brown favors a languid delivery, often turning a syllable or a phrase inside out as she releases it.”
Rachel’s “new record was recorded mostly in one day and in one studio, to capture the collective energy of the group. The rapport between Brown and her band works behind the scenes of the EP to give it clarity and cohesion” states John Donohue, night-life editor of the Goings On About Town section of New Yorker Magazine.
BBC Africa: Ethiopian Singer Rachel Brown talks influences and inspirations
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