Red Hot Chili Peppers got lost in Ethiopia

The Red Hot Chili Peppers funk jam track Ethiopia came following “a life-changing trip Flea and Josh took to the African country.” Josh says:

It was like a musical field trip. We had outings every day. It was like summer camp… and then Flea got lost and when he was lost, he went through a lot of emotions which is reflected on the album. It’s the point where we were starting to really come together.

Flea recalls:

I got lost in a city called Harar. It was a really amazing experience that really changed everything. Damon Albarn had started African Express, basically a bunch of musicians go to a different country in Africa to jam with Africans, listen to African music and trip around. It was f***ing amazing. So we decided we’d go to Ethiopia. One day we got the bus and I got off the bus, walked down this little street, turned around and the bus was gone! I was lost. I walked around this little town for about an hour. No one speaks English and it’s kind of crazy. I started getting scared. People were coming up to me and speaking to me but I didn’t understand. Then one guy came up to me and he started speaking in broken English. He found my friends and helped me. So when I came home, I told that story to Anthony and he wrote that song. It’s very special to me.

Serious.

Further Reading

How to unmake the world

In this wide-ranging conversation, para-disciplinary artist Nolan Oswald Dennis reflects on space, time, Blackness, and the limits of Western knowledge—offering a strategy for imagining grounded in African and anti-colonial traditions.

A migrant’s tale

On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.

What Portugal forgets

In the film ‘Tales of Oblivion,’ Dulce Fernandes excavates the buried history of slavery in Portugal, challenging a national mythology built on sea voyages, silence, and selective memory.

Quando Portugal esquece

Em ‘Contos do Esquecimento,’ Dulce Fernandes desenterrou histórias esquecidas da escravidão em Portugal, desafiando uma mitologia nacional construída sobre viagens marítimas, silêncio e memória seletiva.