Mahmoud Ahmed Homepage

This is an old fashioned fan-page, dedicated to one of the greatest voices of popmusic. Yes, he is right there with Otis Redding at the top of my list. Problem is the man has only a couple of CDs in the shops, and even those you have to look for. Not that he hasn't been prolific, but he's from Ethiopia and the forty or more elpees and cassettes that have been sold, copied and stolen in his homeland during the seventies and eighties are almost impossible to get outside of Africa.

I have been lucky enough to get some of these cassettes and albums, see the man perform and even spoke to him once. Therefore this homepage. To spread the word of this superstar with his awesome earthy voice, his dynamic stage presence and his songs that are deeply melancholic one time and funky the next.

Mahmoud Ahmed will be 68 in the year 2009. He still tours the world, sometimes with a keyboard player and a rhythm box, a bassplayer, a guitarist and/or saxophone player, performing for Ethiopian exiles in Europe and America, sometimes with the French band Badume or the American Either/Orchestra.
On this pages you'll find a feeble attempt at a biography/discography. It is based on the cassettes I have in my possession and a talk I had with Mahmoud Ahmed before one of his concerts in Amsterdam at the end of 1991. It is partly an invitation to help me with additional information.

• Biographical facts and dates
• Discography
• Musicians Mahmoud Ahmed worked with
• My proposal for an introductory Greatest Hits CD, that will make Mahmoud Ahmed an international superstar.

(Where titles in western alphabet were not present I tried to transcribe the amharic characters. Because it is not always clear whether years are in Ethiopian calendar or European calendar dates are probably not always correct. The discography is partly based on copied cassettes and compilation tapes. I tried to identify them by number or opening track, and occasionally I simply guessed for the year of release).

This page was originally published elsewhere, but by popular demand it is now incorporated in Golden Fiction.