Pop Music : Aweke Westernizes Ethiopian Sounds at Wadsworth

Ethiopian music is a largely unknown quantity here, but Aster Aweke’s 90-minute set at UCLA’s Wadsworth Theater offered an often beguiling introduction that mixed Western pop accessibility with an Islamic-rooted vocal tradition.

Appearing with her own five-piece band, the Washington-based singer has a high-pitched voice that bordered on shrillness and could have become grating after a few songs, but it never did Saturday. The slower songs sounding closest to her Ethiopian roots--the ballad “Kabu” and sax/keyboards/vocal arrangement of “Y’Shebellu”--best spotlighted Aweke’s trills, ululations and command of vocal nuance.

Those pieces, and two eerie, brooding instrumentals, also featured Tilaye Gabre’s thrilling, spiritual tenor sax solos. But little of that deep feeling filtered into the bright, poppy up-tempo tunes that followed a similar formula: a loping, jazzy/bluesy near-boogie topped by synth/sax unison melodic fills around Aweke’s vocals.

The closing salvo of “Fikhr Anesgne” and “Yedi Gosh” impressed with their more intricate melodies and bassist Henock Temesgen’s shift to a funk/R&B; attack. If Aweke can better integrate the rich emotional resonance of her Ethiopian heritage with her accessible pop sound, she’ll have a potent combination.