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Tadias’ Favorite Charitable Organizations

December 1, 2009 Tadias Magazine 5 Comments

Above: AFC will hold its 3rd- annual benefit on Saturday, Dec
5 at the WVSA Gallery in Washington, D.C. This year’s theme:
“A Taste of Ethiopia,” offering silent and live art auctions.

Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff

Published: Tuesday, December 1, 2009

New York (Tadias) – The upcoming holiday season is a time when we look forward to gathering with family and friends to enjoy the festivities. It should also be a season to reflect on how we can help those who are less fortunate. Each of the charities listed below focus on basic environmental and social needs: Access to health care, clean water, education, and shelter for Ethiopians. We encourage you to read more about their work on their respective websites and to contribute to their efforts.

Here are our favorite charities (in no particular order). We welcome additional suggestions.

1.) Dir Biyabir (dirbiyabir.org)
Dir Biyabir works in Ethiopia to reduce extreme poverty by investing in people and building their capacity to help themselves. Their projects include providing vocational training and fostering entrepreneurship, building schools for local children, planting trees and rehabilitating the environment, improving local healthcare.

2.) U.S. Doctors for Africa (usdfa.org)
U.S. Doctors for Africa is a humanitarian organization committed to increasing access to medical care for diseases and conditions affecting the people of Africa. By mobilizing and distributing medical manpower, supplies, and equipment to medical institutions throughout the continent of Africa, U.S.D.F.A is able to provide medical and preventative healthcare and capacity-building to regions of Africa without available medical services. US Doctors for Africa believes that health care is a basic human right, and recognizes that a healthy population is essential for growth, development, and prosperity in every society.

3. Artists for Charity (AFC)
For the past three years a group called Artists for Charity (AFC) has challenged people to think about AIDS related issues in an annual holiday event in conjunction with World AIDS week. The non-profit
organization also runs a group home for HIV positive children in Addis Ababa.

4.) Ethiopia Reads (ethiopiareads.org)
Ethiopia Reads believes that education is the key to improving the lives of the next generation of Ethiopians, a country filled with children, and that book are the key to fostering a genuine love of learning. Ethiopia Reads projects include establishment of the Shola Children’s Library, school library development program, children’s book publishing program, and a librarian training program in Ethiopia.

5.) Gemini Healthcare Group (ghcg.org)
Gemini Healthcare Group is a not-for-profit that provides healthcare to women and children in Ethiopia by revitalizing the health and social service infrastructure. The organization is run by volunteers and pediatricians. Current projects include: building and supporting a children’s hospital in Ethiopia, improving health care infrastructure, promoting health education, providing health screening and mass immunizations, and recruiting and retaining local healthcare workers.

6.) A Glimmer of Hope (aglimmerofhope.org)
A Glimmer of Hope focuses on a comprehensive and entrepreneurial approach to humanitarian assistance. Input from village and community leaders is a vital part of the organization’s working model so that projects may truly reflect the necessities of the communities they are serving. A Glimmer of Hope’s work is exclusively based in Ethiopia and focuses on Water and Sanitation, Education, Health Care, IncomeCreation, Micro-Irrigation, Micro-Finance, and Veterinary Clinics. Stay tuned for our interview with Eric Schmidhauser, Director of Social Investment at A Glimmer of Hope.

7.) Girls Gotta Run Foundation (girlsgottarun.org)
The Girls Gotta Run Foundation (GGRF), is a volunteer organization founded in 2006 to raise money to provide support for impoverished Ethiopian girls who are training to be runners. Training to be athletes allows them to stay in school, avoid early marriage, and gain personal independence. Besides athletic shoes, GGRF provides money for training clothes, extra food (”calorie money”), coach subsidies, and other training-related expenses.

8.) Awassa Peace Dojo (www.aiki-extensions.org/projectsAwassa.asp)
Aiki-Extensions’ Ethiopian dojo offers Aikido training and classes for kids and adults six days a week in Awassa. Aikido activities are part of a youth program that includes One Love Theater’s gymnastics AIDS-awareness show, as well as other learning opportunities in art and music. Aikido work enriches the socially conscious Awasa Youth Theater program’s repertoire and provides hands-on training in
conflict resolution skills for youth.

9.) D.E.S.T.A. for Africa (destaforafrica.org)
D.E.S.T.A for Africa is a non-profit cultural organization to address the lack of adequate photographic training in Ethiopia. Through education and self-sustainable opportunities, Ethiopian photographers
can promote a balanced view of their country. The acronym stands for Developing and Educating Society Through Art, and the organization seeks to promote cultural development through the use of photography by providing workshops, exhibitions and creative exchanges.

10.) Worldwide Orphans Foundation (wwo.org)
Worldwide Orphans Foundation recently opened its WWO-AHF Family HealthCare Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. WWO’s aims to transform the lives of orphaned children by taking them out of anonymity and helping them to become healthy, independent, productive members of their communities and their world. The WWO-AHF Family Center in Addis Ababa is a full-service care facility for treating and monitoring the care of orphans and children in families with HIV/AIDS, and for the treatment of adults with HIV/AIDS. The Center helps to bring orphaned children into the mainstream of community life. In addition to life-saving pediatrics and antiretroviral medications, the Center offers a host of programs, including nutritional cooking and job training. Children have dedicated play areas in the clinic and participate in art and music projects. In collaboration with Right To Play and UNICEF, WWO has developed and facilitates an orphan soccer league in Addis Ababa.

Featured, Interviews

Prester John: Medieval Ethiopia’s Mythology and History

November 23, 2009 Tadias Magazine 19 Comments

Tadias Magazine

By Ayele Bekerie, PhD

Published: Monday, November 23, 2009

New York (TADIAS) – Prester John Sessions is the title of the first solo album of Tommy T Gobena, a talented and innovative global musician, who, I believe, is succeeding in his attempt to grasp the meanings of his diasporic sojourn vis a vis his Ethiopian roots. This article is inspired by the title of his album and is written to express my solidarity with his visions and dreams. The essay attempts to construct a historical narrative of what Ethiopian historians call the Zagwe Dynasty and the Medieval Hatse (King of Kings or Emperors) States, for they were two significant historical periods that are not only directly connected to the legend of Prester John, but they are remarkably endowed with religious tales and accomplishments. It is my contention that these two periods might help us understand the historical dimension of what Tommy T calls ‘Prester John Sessions.’

In his interview with Tseday Alehegn of Tadias Magazine, Tommy cites Graham Hancock’s The Sign and the Seal as a source for the title of his album. In Hancock’s book, he learned about a legendary and powerful Ethiopian king named Prester John, who was sought as an ally by European rulers of the medieval period. Europeans persistently sought the king with the hope of establishing an alliance against Moslem forces who occupied Jerusalem. The strong global sentiment for the legendary Ethiopian king became a source of inspiration to Tommy T, who used the name as a title of his album. In so doing, Tommy T has elevated his artistry by composing music linked to medieval Ethiopian history.

Who is Prester John? According to John Reader, “the earliest-known reference to Presbyter Iohannes (medieval Latin, meaning Prester, or Priest John) appears in an 1145 CE manuscript of Otto, Bishop of Freisingen, referring to him as a powerful Christian priest-king ruling a vast empire vaguely supposed to be somewhere in middle Asia.” The priest-king is equivalent to Hatse of Ethiopia or Pharaoh of ancient Egypt or Kandake of Meroé. It is a collective term that is assigned to divined rulers. Kandake was the title for women rulers of Meroé in the present day Sudan.

Ethiopia of the medieval period often designated geographically as a part of ‘Indies.’ Munro-Hay cites what he calls “the mediaeval planispheres and portulans” who identified Ethiopia as the “Indian land of rumor and legend.”

The earliest reference to Prester John corresponds in the Ethiopian chronology to the period of the Zagwe Dynasty (1137-1270 CE), a dynasty that thrived in Lasta, northern Ethiopia and its seminal achievement, the rock-hewn Lalibela churches, is now recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site, which means that the churches are internationally protected and preserved so that successive generations would be able to enjoy the marvels of architectural feat. The kings of the Zagwe Dynasty presided over an excavation of eleven churches from a single rock. These churches were carved in the twelfth century and they are still in use for mass and other religious activities. In other words, the churches are an enduring expression of devotion to faith and a constant source of global fame.

The kings of the dynasty built churches in Lasta so that Jerusalem continues to live. In fact, the eleven rock-hewn churches built in Lasta are called the churches of the second Jerusalem. The dynasty’s achievement has reached Europe. In fact, they have contributed to the invention and perpetuation of the legend of Prester John.

On the other hand, some historians trace the name Prester John to one of the kings of the Maji. Jasper, one of the kings, is known as Prester John and all his successors assumed the title thereafter. According to this account, the title Prester was chosen “because there was no degree in the world more elevated than the priesthood. The name John was selected in reference to John the Baptist or John the Evangelist,” writes Munro-Hay, citing the story in the Book of the Three Kings (the Maji).

Furthermore, a map published by Sebastian Munster at Basle in 1544 locates the kingdom of Prester John in the northern highlands of present day Ethiopia. Prester John is also mentioned in maps drawn in an earlier period, such as the Egyptus Novelo map of Florence (1454) and the Mappomondo of Venice (1460). This particular period corresponds to the period of the ‘restored’ Solomonic Dynasty. It is also known as Shoan Dynasty. This period has produced great Ethiopian emperors, such as Hatse Yekuno Amlak (1270-1285), Hatse Amda Tsion (1314-1344), Hatse Dawit I (1382-1413), Hatse Yishaq (1414-1429), Hatse Zer’a Ya’qob (1434-1468), Hatse Libne Dengel (1508-1540), and Hatse Tserse Dingel (1563-1597). The Dynasty, which was founded by Hatse Yikno Amlak in 1270 in Shoa, the central highlands of Ethiopia, had 26 Hatses and lasted for 302 years. According to Tadesse Tamrat, “the borders of this kingdom extended roughly to the northern districts of Shoa in the south, the region east of Lake Tana and the upper Blue Nile in the west, and the edge of the Ethiopian plateau in the east.”

The Hatses are divined and their power is defined in the Fetha Nagast, or Law of the Kings. Their power is both ecclesiastical and civic. Kebra Nagast, or the Glory of Kings, on the other hand, is a sacred text linking the genealogy of the Hatses to Menelik I, the founder of the Solomonic Dynasty.

In the period of the ‘restored’ Solomonic Dynasty, “there were also Muslim principalities in the area, along the coast from the Dahlak archipelago in the Red Sea to the Somali town of Brava on the Indian Ocean.” The Muslim principalities were strategically located and benefited a great deal by controlling trade routes in the region. Tadesse observes that “by the end of the thirteenth century, powerful Muslim communities had emerged which were to constitute various well-organized principalities and states: the most important in the interior were Shoa, Ifat, Fetegar, Dawaro, Hadya, Bali and Adal.”

The Sultans of Muslim communities entered in both peaceful and hostile relations with the Hatses of the Ethiopian plateau. During the medieval period, they managed to maintain their autonomy, even though most of them were obliged to pay tributes to the Hatses. Some of the Hatses chose peaceful coexistence with Muslim principalities, while others used force to convert the Muslims to Christianity. In the sixteenth century, a rebellious Muslim leader emerged and succeeded in conquering vast regions controlled by Hatses. The Muslim leader was Imam Ahmed, who defeated the army of Hatse Lebne Dengel at the Battle of Shimbra Qure.

According to Ayele Teklehaymanot, ‘love for things Ethiopian’ began in Europe in the middle Ages. Europe desperately searched for the legendary Pester John in the Indies, which was a geographical term of the time that refers to eastern Ethiopia (India and the Arabian Peninsula) and western Ethiopia (the Horn of Africa, and north east Africa). The Europeans were desperate in their desire to wrest back Jerusalem from Jihadist occupiers. It is also important to note that the geographical interpretation of Indies also placed Ethiopia in Asia. For instance, Honorius D’Autumn, at the beginning of the XII Century CE, asserts: “Sunt vero termini Africae: nilus ex parte orientis…” To Giovanni Battista Brocchi of the fifteenth century CE, the subjects of the ‘Prester John’ were distinguished as Ethiopians and Indians.

“In the year 1400 King Henry IV of England sent a letter to the ‘King of Abyssinia, Prester John.” Tadesse Tamrat, the eminent Ethiopian historian and author of the definitive book, Church and State in Ethiopia (1972), identified the Ethiopian king for whom the letter addressed to as Atse Dawit, the father of the famous and learned emperor Hatse Zer’a Ya’qob, who authored several sacred books. Historians are not certain whether the letter reached Hatse Dawit. However, a copy of the letter is found in the British Royal archives. Portuguese and Roman writers of the middle Ages translated Hatse to mean priest-king.

The genesis of Prester John, as I indicated earlier, coincides with the period in Ethiopian history that may be characterized by a great deal of religious revivalism. This period includes the Zagwe Dynasty of Lasta and the ‘restored’ Solomonic Dynasty of the central Ethiopian highlands. Temporally, the period extends from eleventh century to the sixteenth century of the Common Era. During this time, the Ethiopian rulers were directly involved in the teachings, writings and administration of the Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

It is also important to note that the period was a period of the consolidation of Islamic states and sultanates. One might add that it was also towards this period that history recorded the internal turmoil that resulted in the rearrangement of the region with irreversible settlement of the Oromos on the central and northern highlands of Ethiopia. Their concept of Gudficha made it easier for diverse ethnic groups on the highlands to interact with the Oromos. Islamic states have also expanded beyond the traditional borderlands and lowlands of the country.

The Late Stuart Munro-Hay in his book Ethiopia Unveiled: Interaction Between Two Worlds, extensively documented the meeting of Europe and ‘Prester John.’ According to Munro-Hay, in 1427 the ‘Prester John’ sent two ambassadors, one Muslim and one Christian, to Valencia to see Alfonso V, king of Aragon (Spain). ‘Prester John’ Yeshaq or Hatse Yeshaq ruled an empire that had seventy-two kings; twelve were Muslims and the rest Christian. What is notable about this account is that ‘Prester John’ appeared to have succeeded in presiding over both Muslim and Christian states. His decision to send Muslim and Christian emissaries to Aragon may suggest the prevalence of peaceful co-existence of Muslims and Christians in Ethiopia. ‘Prester John’ did not participate in the ‘crusade’ to liberate Jerusalem, perhaps unwilling to disrupt the peace he established in his multi-religious empire.

King of Aragon’s envoy to Ethiopia carried with him a letter dated 15 May 1428 to “the most eminent and most victorious monarch, the lord Ysach [Yeshaq], son of David, by the Grace of God, Presbiter Johannes of the Indies, master of the Tablets of Mount Sinay and the Throne of David, and king of kings of Ethiopia.” The letter, which is still available at the Aragon Archive in Barcelona, Spain, hints at that time a strong Ethiopia whose leader was victorious and who also, sought trade and diplomatic relations with Europe. Hatse Yeshaq even suggested marriage alliances with the Aragon royal family. It might be worthwhile to note that the earliest written reference to Somalia is found in a praise poem written in Amharic for Hatse Yeshaq, whose empire reached the northern Somali coast.

Several Arab historians and geographers profusely documented the history of the Hatse Medieval States, apart from local large historical documents and royal chronicles, their deeds. The Arab historians narrated in greater details the powers and territories of both the Hatses and the Sultanates. We also learn that the Hatses sent emissaries and letters to Europe in order to establish diplomatic and trade relations. The Hatses have fought with the Muslim states and often settle their political disputes by acknowledging their relative power position.

Ibn Yaqub in 872 wrote about the Hatses’ control over the Dahlak islands on the Red Sea. Masudi in 935 reported that Hatses controlled the port of Zeyla in the Gulf of Aden, as well as the Dahlak Islands on the Red Sea. Ibn Hawkal in 970 agreed with the reporting of Masudi.

The geographer Idris included northern Somalia as part of the sovereign of the Hatses. Another Geographer Ibn Said in the thirteenth century identified the Wabe Shebele River as a divider between the territories of Ethiopia and Azania. According to Ibn Said, the northern half of Moqadishu was under the rule of the Hatses. Ibn Fadal Alah Omari in the fourteenth century wrote about the vast empire of the Hatses. The territory extends from Indian Ocean to Gulf of Aden to Barka Valley of northern Eritrea. The fourteenth century Ethiopia had ninety-nine big and small states governed by kings and sultanates. These states paid their tributes to Hatses or king of kings of Ethiopia.

The Arab historian Omari included the following states under the sovereign of Hatses: Somhar, Hamasien, Nara, Tigrai, Sehart, Amhara, Shoa, Damot, Genz, Adasso and Mora. The South Eastern territories have also paid tributes to the Hatses. These territories were: Yifat, Dewaro, Arababani, Hadiya, Sharka, Bale and Derra. These historians have also documented the presence of fifty linguistic groups within Medieval Ethiopia.

Historians also researched the accounts of Portuguese travelers. Some even suggest that the legend of Prester John inspired the Portuguese to build ships and navigate the oceans. Given the fact that the Portuguese travelers were among the first foreign visitors received by the Hatses, it was clear that they took the legend very seriously. For instance, Francisco Alvares, who visited Ethiopia for six years at the time of Hatse Lebna Dengel’s rule, referred to him as Prester.

Among the Hatses, Amde Tsion was regarded by far the most powerful. He ruled over both the Christian and Muslim states. The Aragonese king Alfonso V noted in his letter dated 18 September 1450 identified Hatse Zer’a Ya’qob as the ‘most illustrious and most serene prince Lord Jacobo, son of David, of the House of Solomon, Emperor of Ethiopia.’ According to Mersea Hazen Wolde Qirqos, Hatse Zer’a Ya’qob was highly educated. He sponsored the translation of several sacred books from Arabic to Ge’ez. He also authored several holy books himself. According to Richard Pankhurst, “Imperial power was probably at its greatest during the time of the great centralizing emperor Zar’a Ya’qob (1434-68).

It is worthwhile to note that the Medieval Hatse rulers have established governance over the multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation-state. It can be argued that the seeds for modern state of Ethiopia may have been sown much earlier than what is usually believed. Tommy T’s ‘Prester John Sessions’ is a glaring reminder of our persistent quest in our long history, for transforming a shared time and space into one Ethiopia.

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This article is well-referenced and those who seek the references should contact Professor Ayele Bekerie directly at: abekerie@gmail.com

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Art

Cross-Cultural Music Improvisations: A Conversation with Dan Harper

November 16, 2009 Lifestyle Tadias 9 Comments

Tadias Magazine
Interview by Tseday Alehegn

Updated: Monday, November 16, 2009

New York (Tadias) – As an aid worker for a British NGO in Ethiopia, Dan Harper (Invisible System) lived and traveled throughout Ethiopia for three years. He also nurtured his first love: music, and built a studio from scratch to produce and collaborate with Ethiopian musicians. Harper describes his Worm Hole studio equipment as something which “can be setup around scarce resources such as in an outhouse with corrugated iron roofing (interesting in the rainy season), carpets and breeze blocks. It is also now constructed in a more solid form in Frome, Somerset whilst maintaining its nomadic and professional feel and look.” Harper co-wrote and sound engineered Dub Colossus’ album “A Town Called Addis” with Nick Page, and most recently came out with his own album “PUNT Made in Ethiopia” (Harper Diabate Records) featuring an incredibly diverse list of musicians, ranging from talent he spotted at a traditional Azmari joint to sessions with singer Tsedenia and the legendary Mahmoud Ahmed. Harper stresses that the collaboration is not trying to imitate how Ethiopians play music. Rather it’s an entirely improvisational recording. Invisible System has played at the Addis Music Festival as well as several live concerts in the U.K. Proceeds from the album are helping to establish a charity focusing on providing resources to artists and musicians in the developing world, an issue which Harper believes is often neglected by international NGOs.

We spoke with Dan about his first album release on Harper Diabete Records and his work to create genuine cross-cultural conversations through music.

Tadias: Can you tell us a bit about yourself? How you ended up living and working in Ethiopia?

Harper: Before I start, I’d like to say it’s really nice to be involved with Ethiopians and Ethiopian culture and music. I have very fond memories of Addis, and I traveled all around the country. I had volunteers all over the place. I’ve been to Jimma, up to the North, I’ve been to the South, Lake Langano, Awasa. It’s been so long now that I’ve even started to forget the names of all the places… Gonder, Mekele. Fantastic country really.

Okay, so I grew up in England. Mother was born in India, raised in New Zealand and she moved to England when she was 18. My dad comes from a working class coal miner and army background. He later became an academic. I grew up in the southwest of England. I always wanted to go to Africa..always fascinated. Even as a kid, when I was 12 I was listening to bands that infused African rhythm and sound. Something always hit the mark for me. A lot has driven me to Africa. Also, I’ve always had a thing about development and the problems of developing countries and the injustice of it all. And that is ingrained from a young age as well. I used to complain when we had three course meals when I was 11 or 12 saying there were people who can’t eat in the world. It’s just been part of me. So that’s me: I love art, I love music. I’m interested in international culture. I love different ways of talking, and eating, and interacting, and different clothes and hairstyles. I think that’s what’s magical about the world.

I’ve always been fascinated with music since the age of 7. I’m obsessed with it I think. I’ve taught myself to play everything. I’ve taught myself to produce, to sound engineer. I’ve built my own studio. I’ve done it without the equipment being bought for me. I’ve had to work hard for it. And I’ve had to build it bit by bit. And I’ve been in constant debt for it, so it’s an absolute love, and passion, and something I can’t stop doing.

When I left school I bought a camp van and I worked and I drove around Europe and down to Turkey with my girlfriend, and had an interest in international development and culture since then. Since seeing people live in cardboard boxes as I drove around. And at university I changed very quickly from studying computing management to studying environmental management, although I probably should have done, music, technology or both. But there you go. Both things come together. I had wanted to work abroad in NGOs.. I was always quite anti-government. I grew up in Thatcher’s government so plenty of reasons to be upset. And I had to volunteer for years..there was no paid work in Environment. There was no way to go to Africa. You had to pay for yourself. I had no money. I was trying to build a studio that was getting me in debt, and eventually I had to go into business. Didn’t enjoy working in business. Had to cut my hair which was awful and wear a suit which was awful – not me at all. And I ended up working for the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University in quite a basic, boring admin job. I knew it would springboard me overseas and I took a job up in Mali eventually, which I was very lucky to get after a few years work experience. I learned French and worked for a local environmental NGO. I was in the middle of the desert. It was really hard work, hard conditions, teaching kids about environmental issues. And I met my wife out there, and I worked there for four and half years and I have a daughter.

We could afford to get on as a family there so I thought I better try to get a better paying job, as I wanted to stay overseas. I wanted to stay in Africa. And a job with a British NGO came up and I got it and it was in Ethiopia. And unfortunately Ethiopia, I think, has been spoiled by the media and the problems of the famine. Because everyone thinks about famine and dry, desert conditions including me. I was as guilty, because I thought “I’m going from one desert to another.” And it’s not is it? I mean how green, and lush and beautiful is Addis, Jimma and even some places in the North. Not that barren. I’m not going to get into the history and the problems. Those are things for us to discuss another time. Complicated history and reasons. But sure I was out in Ethiopia for three years, and I have a fair idea of what went on. I have a few Ethiopian friends who I’m still in contact with. But that’s how I ended up living and working in Ethiopia. And it was a three year contract. I had a great time with the Ethiopians I work with. I had volunteers out helping government and non-governmental organizations in HIV/AIDS and small business. I didn’t enjoy working for voluntary service agencies – the British organization. I didn’t like their obsessiveness with bureaucracy and paperwork, and they weren’t getting the volunteers out efficiently as it could have been. I didn’t like the attitude of the country directors who were British. I didn’t think that they treated the Ethiopian staff as well. But Ethiopia was great, Addis was great. I had a fantastic circle of friends. I had a great social life. And I was trying to help in every which way I could through the development work, and bringing as many volunteers as I could out to work with people from all over the world. My idea was to create more volunteer positions, and get volunteers out there and make a change. So that’s how I ended up out there with my family.

Tadias: Can you describe the role of music in your life? When did you start producing music?

Harper: God, without music it would be awful. When I’m listening to and playing music that is my ultimate meaning of the world. Work could get boring everyday, you know, doing things that you don’t always want to be doing. [Music is] escapism in a way, but it’s like my religion, it’s like my spiritual being. It’s my way of releasing all the creativity, the need to make colorful and creative things and sounds, and this is my way of doing it. And without it I would be bored and grey and depressed. There’s more to life than writing paper, for me anyhow. I think everyone’s different. I started producing music when I was about seventeen, and I bought and taught myself how to play an electric guitar, and started playing in a band. I borrowed a friend’s four-track tape recorder and started overlaying guitars like that, and you know it’s gone on ever since. Teaching myself the guitar, drums, bass, keyboard, synthesis, sound engineering production, using the studio.. the full works. It gradually increases. I’ve never had enough time for it. I’ve always worked full time. It always been get in, fighting fatigue from work drinking coffee to write and produce music. And it’s difficult because you never have enough energy, and at the weekend you’ve gotta clean your house, and well now deal with the kid as well, and try to have a social life so. Yeah it’s been going on since I was 17. I am now 37. I should have had an album out years ago. But there you go.

Tadias: And the artwork on your CD cover?

Harper: The art work was a mixture of myself and Bos / Warp (Paul Boswell) a graffiti based artists in Frome who is well known for his work in Bristol, and Moussa from Addis. The painting of the musicians was created by Moussa to say “thank you” to me. Moussa was an orphan and he was lucky enough to make it to study music at Addis University. He is a lovely guy and I sorted him out with a job teaching my neighbour’s child the guitar. My neighbour was English and she had married an Ethiopian in Addis. We forwarded him some salary and when I was in the UK I purchased him an electric guitar that my neighbour brought back to Addis for him. He was so happy he made me that painting. I changed it color and vibrancy-wise to match the feel of the album, but the original is also wonderful and will be published perhaps on the next album.

Punt, Made in Ethiopia album cover.

I love Bos’s humour, it always makes me laugh but with the album, the faces he had painted by chance reminded me of the Ethiopian painted faces you often see with big eyes. I liked the connection due to the fusion nature of the album covering styles of Ethiopian, Pop, Dance, Trance, Rock, Dub, Reggae, Drum and Bass, Punk and Grunge. It all fits! And the other painting of the chap/creature in the suit and tie reminded me of how it feels to be an artist trapped in the office in a suit and tie during the day! Personal! I have always combined aid work, which includes offices and suits and ties with my art.

Bos also plays bass on one track on the album and plays live with me sometimes with the UK Invisible System setup, which has a Jamaican born UK based reggae singer doing the vocals. I am also in another more punk/psycehdelic/jam based band with Bos on bass, me on guitar and Merv Pepler from the Ozrics Tentacles and Eat Static on drums. We have not decided on a name yet but some suggestions have arisen…Flaps, The Mutes and The Coalminers are three!

Tadias: Tell us a bit more about the music scene in Addis and your collaboration with various local and internationally known Ethiopian musicians.

Harper: When I first got to Addis, I found there was a lot of buzz where people would sing in front of electronic keyboards, with electronic drums, which wasn’t quite my kind of thing. And then I found the Azmari bets, which I loved more. The traditional..seeing the masinko, singing and clapping and dancing. I bumped into most of the people that I worked with within odd clubs around Addis, say kind of at two in the morning. That’s where I found Nati on the album, that’s where I found Desta. Just people whose voices I liked. I approached them after. Sometimes I needed translating because my Amharic wasn’t good enough – their English wasn’t good enough just to communicate. I often have my music on an MP3 player, and I’d put headphones on them and say “do you want to come and jam?” And that’s how a lot of it kicked off actually. Tsedenia was introduced to me via my wife’s hairdresser. My wife was having her hair done down the road and saying that I was recording in the studio at home making music. Mahmoud was a chance because I sold a mike to someone who turned out to be a friend to Mahmoud’s saxophone player who came, walked into the studio and loved what I was doing. He told Mahmoud that he has to come down and listen, and Mahmoud came and listened and loved it as well and just asked to be a part of it, which was fantastic. I knew who he was but hadn’t heard that much of his music to be honest. I have cracking cassette of Mahmoud that I bought out in Jimma. A really old one. I love it. I love the old rough sound of it..the scales and just things that wouldn’t come to the Western mind.

We grow up in such different cultures that even the tonalities sound different to us and bring up different emotions – it’s what makes the world go round. I loved working with people over there and I never tried to emulate what the Ethiopians were doing when they played. I think Nick tried to do that with Dub Colossus. But I’d invited everyone over and people were quite reserved. They’d say “What do you want me to play? How do you want me to play?” And I’d just say “Do what you want. Do what you feel.” I played them some music that I put together to improvise what you feel. “Don’t worry about what you think I want.” And that’s the magic of it for me. It all comes from each other’s soul. That nothing’s pre-arranged. It’s just pure music from our hearts and soul and that’s what it’s about at the end of the day. To put those two things together that come from the different languages and culture and feelings for me is what it’s all about.

Tadias: Can you explain the name that you chose (Punt, Made in Ethiopia) for your current CD?

Harper: I chose PUNT because Punt was the name given to that area of land that they believe was Ethiopia and what the Egyptians used to call Punt. The magic land. Where people would come back with artifacts, not just animals such as giraffes or lions but also myrrh and other kinds of incense that were biblical and were apparently from this magical land called Punt. I love the history of Ethiopia and England, and the kind of pre-commercialism culture and the spiritual culture. I like the kind of druids and animists that lived in England and Africa before. I’m sure it was hard in other ways. I do like modern life as well, but to go back to that kind of working Azmari musicians and the Masinko and the kind of traditional human element of it, and the magical way the music that we create was done. It all makes sense to me to call it Punt. So that’s where Punt came from. Looking backwards but moving forward.

PUNT is an album that was improvised, from scratch – all instruments and vocals. We are not into using Ethiopian (or Malian) samples or trying to quickly learn and imitate Ethiopian musicians who have their sounds, modes, scales, feelings and soul from their culture and country else we would be the neo-colonialists. We are into sharing, learning and exchange over time. The music is based on real life experience not from reading. It is played from the heart and soul of everyone involved. Their own interpretation thus tapping the ebbs and flows of our lives.

Tadias: What are your favorite memories of Ethiopia? Africa?

Harper: Wow, you just asked a huge question. My favorite memories of Ethiopia and Africa. They’re so many. I miss going out and eating injera and hot food. And seeing all those beautiful and incredible faces all around. And I miss going to Elsie’s bar – the kind of bohemian culture. And I miss my friends and I miss traveling around. I miss the hot spring pools like Wondogenet. I miss the more openness of a culture of people that are out and about more. It’s cold here. We all live in tiny little houses. It’s cramped in and tiny gardens in England. I’m not saying people don’t in Ethiopia and Africa. You know it depends where you live, but I miss the fact that people are out and walking more, and talking more. And I miss that I can push my daughter down the road and people would kiss her and pick her up and I won’t be scared. I won’t think there’s a problem with a child molester. And I can go to a restaurant and she’ll be off having a tour and the waitresses would take her off to the kitchen and the lack of the excessive rules and regulations we have here in driving and living and existing. I do see Ethiopia as quite bureaucratic also and I suppose especially in Mali I miss the slight element of chaos.

When I went back to play at the Addis Music Festival last year, and we were in the car and I just realized that all the cars were worming their way through a massive non-road of road. I miss all that. I hate all these straight lines and everything here. So there are so many things. There really are so many things. And I miss being in a foreign culture. It’s boring being in England all the time. Everything gets a bit grey and even the language and clothes and too many people are in mono-culture. I like being dropped in what appears to me a more exotic place because I don’t come from there. If someone came from Ethiopia and they were here for three years it would be exotic for them. I got married and had a kid so there are other good memories and I’d like my daughter to keep coming back to Africa. She loves Ethiopia. She used to understand Amharic and she was only three years old when we left and unfortunately she’s forgotten that now. So there are so many [memories] I couldn’t even put them down so I’ll move on.

Tadias: What are the highs and lows of independent music production?

Harper: The highs are: you can create what you want, when you want it, how you want it. You don’t have to argue with someone that a song should sound differently or needs to be more commercial or what order they run on the CD or what art goes on the CD. It’s a great freedom. The need to be an artist for me is to have the freedom of expression, whereas at work you have to curtail how you do things and what you write and how you present yourself. Art for me is about being you, being genuinely you, and doing it independently with your own studio, label and your friends and musicians around you..that you have a common desire together. And it’s fantastic. And also feeling and creating something off your own back..that you had a vision that became a reality and developed into something real.

Now the downsides of it are, well, money because I don’t have any. I’ve had no money to back this and it’s done on credit. There’s no money for getting visas and passports to bring Ethiopians over to play. You know it’d have to be backed by someone. The promotion is really difficult, because I’ve got no one to pay to do the PR. So on top of a full-time job and a family and trying to finish CDs and write more music, you’re trying to get your CD out there and contact people and journalists and send them copies – it’s endless. It goes on an on. It’s fantastic, it’s nice to be able to do it but I’m constantly tired, obviously. So you haven’t got any help is what I’m trying to say. And you haven’t got any resources. And the distribution is quite tricky as well even, because unless you’ve got a lot of money to pay a distribution company that’s hard as well as organizing gigs.

If you are signed to a contract with a major label you can be able to say “okay I can take two years off work” because I guaranteed that income. But I wouldn’t want it to have been any other way. I’ve loved the way it has happened. You can get professional sounds with your studio at home, the only problem is space. Sometimes you can work as loud as you need to, because you’re disturbing your kid’s sleep. We’ve got a tiny house here and my garage is my live room. It would be nice to have more space. When I worked in Peter Gabriel’s studio with Dub Colossus I could get the same sound here. I don’t think you need that expensive equipment. You need good equipment but not that expensive. But the space was nice.

I wouldn’t mind one day for someone to say to me “we’ll give you this much money” so you can concentrate on it properly for a year or two, and I wouldn’t mind some help getting Ethiopians over here to play with me and touring the world of course. It would be absolutely amazing.

Tadias: Anything else that you’d like to tell Tadias readers?

Harper: I just want to say that I loved being in Ethiopia and I loved going back to play at the Addis Music Festival, and I know I’ll go back again and I can’t wait to go back again. My daughter so wants to go back, because she remembers it and we have videos of her being there. And I really hope to get to America someday. I’ve never been to America and I’d love to play a concert with some Ethiopians. It would be wild. It would be fantastic. I really hope that you get to see us play live. I don’t know how it’s gonna happen but I hope. And I hope you all enjoy the album. I know Ethiopia may be different once you’ve been out but it’s a very strong country and it’s very proud, which I think is great. It’s never been colonized and Amharic is still the first language. But this album could be quite a shift in style and way of listening and thinking. I know that they don’t particularly like Dub Colossus over there yet. Tsedenia says they just kind of go “oh yeah it’s interesting,” but they prefer the traditional, but I’ve had fantastic feedback from people in Addis actually for the album which thrilled me because you’re always worried when you’re not fluent in Amharic. You think you might have chopped a sentence at a bad point because it sounds good to you, but if you’re not sure what they’re saying you might have ended it at the wrong place. I just hope you guys get something out of it and enjoy it and please buy it. Don’t pirate it because we’re setting up a charity here and it can help us with good hard work. Real work. And I want to keep this growing so please don’t pirate it. That’s the only other thing that I’d like to say. And get in touch. I’d love to hear from you all. Give me your thoughts. I miss speaking to you all out there. Thanks for the interview. Take care.

Tadias: Thank you Dan! We enjoy your album and look forward to seeing you in concert in North America sometime.

Dan Harper can reached at Dan@harperdiabate.com. Harper Diabate, 1 River Walk, Frome, Somerset, BA11 5HU: myspace, facebook.

About the Author:
Tseday Alehegn is the Editor-in-Chief of Tadias Magazine.

About the Album:
PUNT (Made in Ethiopia) by Invisible System
Invisible System present a 12 track fusion album of Ethiopian, Dub, Dance, Rock, Drum & Bass, Psychedelia, Trance, Electronica & live music. Traditional vocals / instruments meet the modern, electronic and brass. Live Europeans meet live Ethiopians. Our guests include:

Mahmoud Ahmed & Bahta Gebrehiwot (Ethiopiques)
Hilaire Chabby (Baba Maal)
Justin Adams (Robert Plant & Strange Sensation, ex Jah Wobble’s Invaders)
Tsedenia, Mimi, Tarmeg & Sami (now signed to Realworld Records)
Joie Hinton (ex-Eat Static & Ozric Tentacles / Here and Now / IGV)
Martin Cradick (Baka Beyond/ex-Outback)
Captain Sensible (The Damned)
Ed Wynne (Ozric Tentacles / Noden Inctus)
Simon Hinkler (ex-The Mission)
Dubulah (ex-Transglobal Underground, Temple of Sound, Natasha Atlas etc)
Perch (Zion Train)
Juldeh (Justin Adams, Realworld etc)
Elmer Thudd (ex-Loop Guru)
Gary Woodhouse (The Rhythmites)
Bos (ex-Junk Waffle and Warp Graf/Eat Static Artist)

Interviews

Grammy-Nominated Singer Looks Forward to Motherhood

November 16, 2009 Tadias Magazine 8 Comments

Above: Grammy-Nominated singer Wayna is expecting her
first child. (Courtesy photo)

Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff

Updated: Monday, November 16, 2009

New York (Tadias) – Grammy-nominated singer Wayna says she is looking forward to a new challenge – motherhood. “The most important news of my life these days is that my husband and I are expecting our first child next May,” Wayna shared in her exclusive interview with Tadias Magazine. “This is a dream come true, and I’m enjoying every moment of becoming a mom. It is an amazing feeling.”

Wayna has also been collaborating with up-and-coming Ethiopian-American artists on an album to be released at the end of the month. Here is the interview:

Tadias: What’s on your plate these days?

Wayna: I am part of a collective of Ethiopian and American artists called the Kaffa Beanz. It includes myself, the Prophet of BurntFace, B Sheba, Gabriel Teodros, and AP. We did a collaboration album called Andromeda using traditional Ethiopian samples and hip hop beats. It started out as a project we were doing for fun. But one by one, the songs starting coming together so well that by the time we were finished, we felt like we’d created something special and uniquely Ethiopian-American — something that reflected our taste as soul and hip hop artists, but that also showcased our culture.

On November 20th, we are all coming together from all parts of the country to do a special performance/release party at Zanzibar on the Waterfront in Washington, DC. It’ll be the first and maybe the only time we’ll all be under one roof, so I want to invite everyone within reach to come out. We’ll be performing and selling the album which is a limited release, and the concert will also feature a performance from me and from, Togolese rapper, Tabi Bonney. Every African who loves hip hop or soul should be there.

Tadias: You also write most of your songs, what is that process like for you?

Wayna: The writing process is always different for me. Sometimes, I’ll get a beat and listen for a melody, and then choose lyrics that fit however the music makes me feel. Other times, I’ll have a concept or a hook in my head already and work with a producer or my band to build the music around it. There are also times when I sit at the piano and come up with something on my own. One of the things I enjoy about writing the most is that its unpredictable, and I never know where or how a song will take shape.

Tadias: Your last album garnered a Grammy-nomination. Do you reckon your next LP will be on the same level?

Wayna: No, I hope it will be better. My #1 goal is to keep growing. I still feel like I’m new to being an artist, because I spent so much of my life being a professional and working in an office. So, I’m growing a lot still, and thankfully the music usually reflects that.

Tadias: By the way, where were you when you learned of the news about your Grammy nomination?

Wayna: I was in South Africa at my girlfriend’s wedding. We had just started a post-wedding vacation in an area of the country where there was no access to the Grammy broadcast, so I woke up early the morning after and went to the hotel lobby to check the Grammy site. Before I even got there, there were a flood of emails in my myspace account congratulating me.

Tadias: You seem to travel a lot. Are there any highlights from the tour you’d like to share with us?

Wayna: Yes, its been a busy year for me, I’ve had stops in NYC, Philly, LA, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Austin and many other cities. Probably my most memorable of these dates was sitting in with the Roots at their weekly jam session at the Highline Ballroom in NYC. It was sold-out, and there I was standing with one of my favorite bands ever. Artists are supposed to just come and jam, no rehearsal no discussion about what your going to do. So, I started with Slums of Paradise, a song I wrote about Ethiopia on my first album, Moments of Clarity Book 1, and they made a beautiful groove behind it, and the crowd loved it!

I’ve also gotten to do shows abroad in London, Toronto and a 3 month residency in Ethiopia, where I played at Harlem Jazz, the Sheraton, the Alliance, the Hilton, and Coffee House. That was probably my most life-changing experience, because I got to live life in my country and to see the music scene there first-hand. My favorite recent overseas trip though has got to be the Selam Youth Festival in Toronto this past summer. The kids were so talented and dedicated, and Weyni Mengesha put on an amazing production. I was really proud to be a part of that.

Video: Wayna at the 2009 Selam Youth Festival in Toronto

Tadias: Which artists would you say have the most influence on you?

Wayna: I love different artists for different things. Bob Dylan for his lyricism, Kim Burrell for her vocals, Stevie Wonder for all of the above, Erykah Badu for her stage show…the list goes on and on. But one of the things I’m excited about for the year ahead listening to new artists and genres that I haven’t been as exposed to. By next year, I’m sure I’ll have a whole new list.

Tadias: Which artists have you not worked with yet, but would love to?

Wayna: My dream collabo is with Andre 3000 of Outkast. He seems to be the kind of artist and producer who has no boundaries for himself, and that is exactly the kind of creative energy I want to be around.

Tadias: You have also teamed up with DC’s rising star Wale to remix ‘Billyclub’ a song about police brutality. Was that inspired by your arrest at Houston Airport?

Wayna: Yes, I had just gotten back from Houston when I was scheduled to perform at the DMV awards. We played “Billyclub,” and because the experience was so fresh in my mind, the show was unlike any other we’d ever done. Wale was in the crowd. We talked about doing this remix, and it came together a few months later. He just got off tour with Jay Z and performing as the house band at the MTV music awards, so I’m excited that we got to do the song together. But mainly, it was an opportunity to vent about whatever feelings I had left over, so I so could just move on. A video for it is soon to be released and the audio is available for a free download.

Tadias: Is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience?

Wayna: The most important news of my life these days is that my husband and I are expecting our first child next May. This is a dream come true, and I’m enjoying every moment of becoming a mom. It is an amazing feeling.

Tadias: Thank you Wayna and we offer you our heartfelt congratulations.

Video: Wayna Reflects On Her Houston Arrest

FOX News: Wayna Performs Billie Holiday Tribute

Art, Events

New York Exhibition Of Recent Paintings By Wosene Kosrof

October 19, 2009 Tadias Magazine 1 Comment

Above: A Taste for Words by Wosene Worke Kosrof , 2008,
acrylic on canvas, 44×41 inches.

Events News

Published: Monday, October 19, 2009

New York – Skoto Gallery is pleased to present WordPlay, an exhibition of recent paintings by the Ethiopian-born artist Wosene Worke Kosrof. This will be his fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. The reception is on Thursday, October 22nd, 6-8pm and the artist will be present.

Wosene Worke Kosrof’s recent work continues his long-standing inventive exploration of the interplay between language, identity, aesthetic beauty and material, using the language symbols of Amharic – one of the few ancient written systems in Africa – as a core compositional element. He is a prolific artist who has consistently employed a vocabulary of signs and symbols, a rigorous compositional organization and uncompromising ability to fuse form and concept with the narrative power of his work in his encounters with history and global transformations over the past three decades. He elongates, distorts, disassembles and re-configures the language characters in a wide-ranging palette, moving beyond literal conventions of words, to create a visual language that deftly incorporates sounds, textures and rhythms of jazz, but that also speaks boldly and clearly to a universal audience.

Wosene’s work draws upon an individual reserve of personal and collective memories to activate a meaningful form of engagement that celebrates the richness of his homeland’s graphic systems, textiles, architectural forms, language and music. He employs the textured and improvisational qualities in his work, imbued with a poetic amalgam of abstraction and reality in his search for symbols and metaphors that explore ideas of spirituality, space and motion, expanding the boundaries of art and consciousness. There is a resonance of personal truth, vision, circumstances and tradition embedded in his work that make us simply believe in the power of art to speak to us in purely human terms.

Wosene Kosrof

Wosene Worke Kosrof was born 1950 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and received a BFA from The School of Fine Art, Addis Ababa and a MFA from Howard University, Washington DC in 1980. He is an artist of international reputation, widely exhibited in Africa, Europe, Japan, the US and the Caribbean. Recent exhibitions include Transformations: Recent Contemporary African Art Acquisitions, Fowler Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 2009, Mexican Heritage Plaza Museum, San Jose, California 2006, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY 2003; Newark Museum, Newark, NJ 2004; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pa 2004, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC 2004; and Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa, Whitechapel Gallery, London 1995. Collections include the National Museum, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; The National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, The Newark Museum, NJ; The Neuberger Museum at Purchase, NY; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN, the Fowler Museum, UCLA, Ca; Samuel P. Harn Museum, University of Florida, Gainesville, Fl; and The Voelkerkunde Museum, Zurich, Switzerland as well as many international private and corporate collections.

—
If you go:
Skoto Gallery
529 West 20th Street
5thFL
New York, NY 10011
Phone Number
212.352.8058
www.skotogallery.com

Family, Featured, News

D.C.’s Ethiopian Community Center Faces New Challenges

September 29, 2009 Tadias Magazine 10 Comments

Tadias Magazine
By: Martha Z. Tegegn

Published: Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Washington DC (TADIAS) — Before Washington D.C.’s Ethiopian Community Center (ECC) commenced its operations in the early 80’s, newly arriving Ethiopians resettling from various refugee camps in Africa had very little resources to rebuild their lives. Majority of the refugees were fleeing harsh economic realities and civil war. “We needed to start something immediately,” says Ms. Hermela Kebede, who was present at ECC’s inception, and witnessed first-hand the large influx of Ethiopian refugees who were being assisted mainly by the United Nations Higher Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The Voice of America news service recently cited U.S. Census Bureau statistics revealing that “there are now close to one million African immigrants in the United States and more than 50 percent of them entered and settled in the country between 1990 and 2000.”

It was important, according to Ms. Kebede, that “a community center of some sort was established.” ECC was set up after several elders in the community gathered together and drafted a plan. Ms. Kebede has been serving as ECC’s Executive Director since 1992. Since its founding, the ECC has provided legal information and referral services on issues ranging from education and health care resources to employment and immigration assistance.

Now, years later, new challenges are being raised by first generation Ethiopian-Americans. “Parents have a genuine concern that their children, many of whom were born and raised in the United States, presently face a cultural identity crisis,” says Ms. Kebede. In recent years this has prompted the ECC to secure funding and to provide a comprehensive Ethiopian culture program, which includes Amharic language lessons, workshops, and traditional dance classes in order to positively introduce first generation Ethiopian-Americans to their heritage.

“My two kids love to come and learn about Ethiopia,” said Tesfaye Mekuria, a former service user and father of two summer campers, Bethlehem and Abel Tesfaye. “They enjoy learning about the history, culture and way of life in Ethiopia. Every time they ask me a question such as how many provinces there are in Ethiopia, I turn to ECC because being away from home, I am clueless myself. Sending them to ECC is indirectly a learning process for me.” The summer camp that Mr. Tesfaye is talking about has successfully taught approximately 200 Ethiopian American children since it’s inception five summers ago.

Slideshow: Photos courtesy of ECC.

The Ethiopian American community is now one of the largest African immigrant communities in the United States. This has created increased pressure on community centers such as the ECC to seek greater funding and include English as a Second Language (ESL) courses for the target population. “ESL wasn’t a major issue at the beginning because the first wave of Ethiopian immigrants were fairly acquainted with English before they settled in America. To the contrary, there is a greater demand of ESL services now for more recent immigrants,” note Ms. Kebede.

“Before I came to the ECC to take ESL courses I was just struggling to work and communicate with my few words of English,” says Messeret Wasse, a frequent visitor to the center. “I couldn’t understand a word of the letters and documents that I received on the job.” The single mother of two who also sends her kids to the Ethiopian Summer camp says, “Thanks to the Community Center now, I can understand every letter that I receive, and I can communicate fairly easily in English.” ESL is among the most successful services provided by the ECC.

Ms. Hermela Kebede, Executive Director of ECC.

The demographics of the Ethiopian immigrant community has dramatically changed which requires ECC to come up with new, contemporary and innovative approaches for affordable and broader range of services. ECC now provides health referral services, an indispensable feature of its outreach program. “We assist people who reside in DC to obtain free health insurance,” said Ms. Woubedle Alemayehu, the HIV Coordinator for ECC. “Most immigrants and their children are uninsured and our goal is to inform them of available services through federal and city government services, and to advise them on how to use them.”

ECC works hand-in-hand with the DC government to provide health and educational services. “Through this important partnership ECC has held two Community Health Fairs, designed especially for the African immigrant community. The program entitled “Being Healthy is Your Responsibility” has provided HIV testing and health related information to members of the African immigrant population. ECC, like many non-profit organizations, struggles to sustain its services. The main challenge is the constant struggle to get funding and obtain new resources.

To address its recent demands from the community ECC developed several new initiatives which volunteerism, reorganizing the Board of Directors, and seeking and utilizing the larger community’s feedback. “Involving the community is one of our highest objectives,” said Professor Lemma Senbet, the new Chair of ECC’s Board of Directors and a renowned scholar and financial expert. “In order to improve services and implement them successfully the input from the community being served is vital.”

The Ethiopian community has generally had low volunteer turnout which have affected some areas of services such as outreach and advocacy. “We are at a critical stage now, and the Center currently faces five critical gaps: community involvement, technology-based communication, administrative, facility, and resources.” Senbet asserts. “Moving forward, the newly recognized Board, with five new members, is determined to grow the Center to the next level by narrowing these gaps in a significant way.”

Lemma W. Senbet, Professor of Finance at the Smith School
of the University of Maryland, is the new Chair of ECC’s Board
of Directors. (Courtesy photo).

Most programs that the ECC offers are grant funded, and according to Ms. Kebede, also must be executed by a specific timeline. At the end of the grant period, some programs continue to receive funding while others may run out of funding, making it very difficult for the Center to maintain and keep staff. The current economic situation and the fact that DC has one of the highest numbers of non-profit organizations make it even more competitive to secure funding,” says Ms. Kebede. So, the new Board has limited time to come up with fresh ideas that can generate new revenue which will enable the center to sustain the highly needed services. According to Dr. Senbet, ECC will be
holding a town hall meeting sometime in October to evaluate the current needs of the community.

Slideshow: Photos courtesy of ECC.

–
ECC welcomes all to use their services and to volunteer at the Center. Its current location is 7603 Georgia Ave., NW, Suite 100 Washington, DC, 20012. For more information, call 202-726-0800 or email eth@prodigy.net.

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Featured, History, Profiles

A Conversation with Haile Gerima

September 17, 2009 Tadias Magazine 24 Comments

Tadias Magazine

By: Martha Z. Tegegn

Updated: Friday, April 2, 2010

New York (TADIAS) – For filmmaker Haile Gerima the travails of life are much like moving images – “a constant journey of restlessness and complexity, until the final rest.”

Haile’s latest film, the critically acclaimed Teza, focuses on the tumultuous years of the Mengistu era, as told by an idealistic Ethiopian doctor who recounts dreams and nightmares.

We spoke with Haile at his Sankofa bookstore, conveniently located across from Howard University where he has been teaching film since 1975.

But first, here is a sneak preview of Teza:

Teza’s main character, Anberber, experiences nightmares reflecting back to the chaotic years in Ethiopia following the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie. Do you think this painful memory is also collectively shared by Anberber’s generation in the Diaspora?

HG: Oh, Certainly. In fact, a lot of people would ask me, “Is it biographical?” I say, no it is a collective experience. It’s a stolen story of a whole lot of people. So the generation that this film speaks to is an idealistic generation, who were sent abroad by governments or by personal ambition, to bring the tonic that would transform their society. Therefore, you have a generation that was leaving the country as if they were sent to go and bring the medicine and cross the river and comeback. Yet, the journey is more complex. When you cross the Atlantic and the threshold of the so-called modern society, you enter in to a new orbit and your journey becomes more complicated. For me, and especially my generation of Ethiopians of the 1970’s and late 60’s, this is the dilemma that dramatized even their well-intended political dream into a nightmare. So it is a generational, I would say, biography.

What memories do you have of that time? Are they reflected in your film?

HG: Well I would say, how genuine young Ethiopian men and women were about changing Ethiopia. How much they cared, how much they loved their country was unquestionable, but at the same time you know you can destroy the object of love if it is possessively displaced. In other words, the dogmatic nature of that generation was such that they arrogantly thought they had the formula for transforming Ethiopia. It left them a confused generation.

The film was shot in Ethiopia and Germany but the story was based here in America. It was first written for America. I remember long ago weekend meetings (of Ethiopians) at the international student center near UCLA or at UCLA. We left all the priorities of our personal life to meet on the issue of country. That is the most amazing experience, but at the same time, we were also feeding a very dangerous dogma to each other. A dogma that swallowed the very generation in its prime age. I was in these meetings. Of course, I got out at a certain point because I couldn’t digest my own tendencies of disappearing in this generational political culture. When we shot the film in Germany we shot in the actual place where Ethiopian students were meeting. It doesn’t matter where we were, Ethiopian men and women of my generation in Paris, in Rome, in Cologne or Frankfurt or Seattle, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. They were doing the same activity and basically reading almost the same books, and these books were taken as Biblical prophecies to transform Ethiopia. And, in the end, we lost so many powerful Ethiopian young men. Brilliant young men and women were lost in this confusion, in this chaotic period. So I know vividly these people that I dedicate the film to. I remember their eyes and how genuine they were. These are not bad people. They were not selfish. They just disappeared in the chaos.

Do you think the current generation is lost in the chaos of individualistic attitude?

HG: Well, you know I think it is a very different generation. Completely different generation. And I don’t know the historical circumstances. I don’t know what would become of them. But it is a generation that is so disillusioned it has no internal strength. Most Ethiopians are not strong inside, that is why they need external jackets and hair-dos, lipsticks, earrings, cars and TV to say “I am somebody.”

Some people would say well it is that political confusion that created this alienated generation, but I always say every generation has a responsibility to be compassionate to be collective-minded and fair and just. You see it in America – young people marching for poor people or against racism etc..so young Ethiopians at this point, they might have personal experiences to use as explanations, but in my view if I have to say it, I find them very confused and very external-oriented, materialistic-oriented. And to me I am not against hair change or lipstick or earrings, but I think inner strength is more important to say “I believe this and I am somebody inside.”

On the other hand you can see a lot of Ethiopians are very successfully involved in the economic foundation of America — they have restaurants. We never thought about restaurants, we never thought about businesses. We all thought we were sent to bring medicine from abroad and cure our people. There was so much trachoma in my village. When you come from those circumstances you don’t have time for personal ambitions. Instead you start thinking “There must be something I could do before I die” or “what is the purpose of living?”

What is purpose of living? Let me put it this way…what is life in the eyes of a cinematographer?

HG: Life is a cinema, constant journey of restlessness complexity, until the final rest. Life for me is constant struggle to have your say in this world to have your story be presented as a valid story.

What is the main message that you want the audience to take away from this film?

HG:The purpose of Teza is really like childhood morning dew. When I was growing up, I would sense the morning from the water caressing my legs while walking through the grass – the morning dew (English for Teza). This type of childhood experience is being lost, and so I am trying to preserve my childhood and I am trying to preserve my generation. And I am trying to remember the mistakes we made especially when we became brutal toward each other – shooting each other, killing each other. I don’t like killing, I never liked killing I don’t know how my generation made its cultural trademark to kill each other because of political differences. These are the reasons I try to work for myself first. People have to take it and see what it does for them, but for me, I am processing the whole confusion that I was part of.

Is Teza historical fiction or is it based on a true story? What in particular inspired you to make the film?

HG: Let me tell you, every time I go to Ethiopia I find mothers asking me to return their sons from the war. A war between two ‘families’ – Eritrea and Ethiopia. A woman who has ‘clogged’ her eyes crying for the past two or three years will lament “bring back my son to me. Can you give me my son? I don’t want your money, I want you to give me my son.” How does one deliver this woman’s request? You are only a filmmaker, you are not an army. How would you fulfill her request? This is the challenge that I face every time I go to Ethiopia. I am faced by the reality of peasants, working people, servants in homes – they all confront me. And so for me the film is like vomiting toxic. In doing so you exorcise your own.

I don’t have the power to make people see my movie, I have no other agenda. If they see it I am grateful. To me, the primary task of this movie is to vomit it, now the inspiration is really my helplessness. Teza’s main character, Amberber, felt completely helpless in one scene when soldiers come to take a son, and the mother was saying give me back my son, he is not armed, he is just confused scholar who got back to his country to his mother, to his umbilical cord in search of his childhood. He is always walking in the landscape because that is where he grew up but the reality kept coming in front of him like a stage play. So, my inspiration is my inability to do something about what the Ethiopian people are going through, then and now. This is what my helplessness is. Other people have a more dramatic source of inspiration. My inspiration is me being helpless, powerless, not having enough resources.

Teza said to have taken 14 years to make, why did it take so long? And what were the challenges in executing it?

HG: Many Ethiopians in my view do not understand the power of culture. When Westerners make film they know it is about their collective culture. We, on the other hand, don’t see how significant it is to preserve our people’s culture, from day one, as it is invoked by descendents. As it resonates through the younger generation. We don’t invest on culture. For instance, Ethiopians in America, if they put twenty dollars a month aside for the transformation of Ethiopian art, for the preservation of Ethiopian culture and tradition, Ethiopia would also have a population that is mentally restructured and confident and capable of making its own history. To create a critically brilliant society you have to have a dramatic cultural transaction.

Can you say a bit more about the leading actors in the film? How you found them and cast them?

HG: None of the characters had acted before. Most of them came to me raw, but they had amazing potential and gift that I was able to say ‘Oh! This person will give me what I want.’ Some of the actors in the village, like the woman who plays Amberber’s mother, has never acted. She doesn’t even know what acting is, but she knocked people out because she was so genuine, truthful, and most of all she understood and felt the story. She lived in the era and I was able to work with her to get what I wanted. So, for me there is what you call ‘gift,’ and in filmmaking half of it is luck. You know, you try and sometimes you mis-cast. I am proud of the cast in Teza, and I didn’t care if they didn’t know acting because I was very confident of making sure that I don’t paralyze them by mystifying acting. I know how to demystify acting, that is part of my education my orientation. I practiced a lot even during Sankofa, Bush Mama, I made movies with non-actors and actors too. The non-actors have done amazing work, so for me when auditioning people I am looking untangle a range of talent, and get the best out of what I want rather than cast corrupted actors who will not be genuine.

Actresses Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur, Veronika Avraham, director Haile Gerima and actors Abeye Tedla and Aaron Arefe attend the ‘Teza’ photocall at the Piazzale del Casino during the 65th Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2008 in Venice. (Getty Images)

What is your favorite film? Why?

HG: The problem with this question is that it is flawed. Favorite film doesn’t exist but what happens is, films inspire me. One of them is ‘The Hour of the Furnaces‘ from Argentina, but the most powerful film that resonates with my childhood experience is a Japanese film called The Island and another Swedish film called My Life as a Dog, and an Italian film called The Bicycle Thief. So it is a range of films – kind of like puzzle work. There are a lot of films that animated my life and resonated with me.

You talk about the influence your parents had on you growing up and how it inspired you to become a storyteller, can you talk about that?

HG: You know, when I was growing up we sat around the fire and my grandmother would always tell a story. And to me that is the foundation of film – storytelling. My father was a playwright and he wrote plays and I participated in different capacities in my father’s plays. And my mother was always full of stories and most nights we had no television, no film to go to. Our TV and TV dinner was fireside chats. Hearing stories from the elders played a major role in my development, as well as kept alive my continued quest to connect to their lifestyle, their aesthetics. I didn’t know it was important to do so then, but now I go out of my way to preserve it. To me, Ethiopia has a lot to offer to an artist. It is a country that has the audacity to invent without imitation. The storytelling is the kind of orientation that I am very blessed and grateful about.

What advice do you have for young aspiring Ethiopian filmmakers? Or anyone that wants to prosper in the artistic world of cinematography?

HG: One is to give your heart fully — to jump and get into it all the way. Not to apologize, not to be inhibited by going to school or not going to school. Or by ‘knowing’ film or not. If you have the urge to tell a story just jump with everything within you. But once you jump in, it is not enough to jump in, now you have to kick if you don’t want to drown, and so the hard work is the process of learning more by yourself through your work.

Every film that I make is my university. I learn so much from my mistakes and I consider my films the most imperfect films because I am always learning to do better from film to film. The kind of filmmakers that young people should aspire to be is to consistently learn from their own films. Watch movies, study paintings and color. Color as simple as it sounds is complex. Understand culture that is fundamental. Film in the end is built in this powerful development of your sensory organs to light, to shadows. This doesn’t come just by wanting to be a filmmaker. You have to go out of your way. Young people should know that one doesn’t become a filmmaker individually but, rather from a collective view. Don’t forget not only to learn what to do but also learn what not to do as well.

Many of your films are financed by independent sources outside the U.S or the community….what makes it easy for you to find funding outside but challenging in the U.S?

HG: I got tired of asking people who don’t value my story to fund my films. In Europe, I found individuals who said ‘Let me join this guy.’ Yes, it takes me years to convince people. that is why it took fourteen years to find the money I needed to start filming in 2004. The first shooting took place in Ethiopia for eight weeks. Then it took me two more years to find the German part – six day shoot. In the end it is luck that I found intellectuals who were predisposed to my right to tell my story and that they want to be part of the storytelling. Mostly because I prefer low budget, I have more freedom to control my film. Even by American standards, I am the freest independent filmmaker who owns his own films. And if I enter into a relationship I never relinquish the power of the filmmaker where other people come to decide for me. I would rather have less money and more freedom.

Where do you find the time and energy to do all this?

HG: From the story, the story keeps me charged.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our audience?

HG: Thank you to Tadias. I know how you guys insist to exist. And I know how difficult it is for magazines to exist. I hope you guys continue to sustain, to struggle to be innovative, to find an alternative way of making sure that you don’t disintegrate and close and collapse. I am impressed that you are at least here in the cyber world – you exist. I am very impressed with that.

Thank you so much Prof. Gerima and we wish you continued success!

HG: Thank you!

Teza, Portrait of an Ethiopian Exile (The Village Voice)

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Featured, Interviews

Interview with Dr. Abraham Verghese

September 9, 2009 Tadias Magazine 6 Comments

Tadias Magazine

By Shahnaz Habib

Published: Wednesday, September 09, 2009

New York (TADIAS) – Earlier this year, Tadias reviewed Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone, an epic novel about a young man’s coming of age in Ethiopia and America. From fascinating social and political portraits of Ethiopia in upheaval, Cutting for Stone zooms into a territory where few have gone before: the drama of the operating theater and the mysteries inside the human body. There can be no doubt that this novel is the work of a seasoned writer who has led many lives in many places.

Time and again, Dr. Verghese has dipped heavily into his own life for furnishing the material for his writing. His experience as a physician in the rural south, caring for terminally ill AIDS patients has been heartrendingly documented in his memoir My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story. Later, in The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss, he described a beloved friend’s struggle with drug addiction, rendering a poetic, raw tribute to male friendships. In his latest book and first novel, Cutting for Stone, the protagonist is a young doctor, raised in Ethiopia, who seeks his fortune in America.

Verghese’s own career as a physician in the United States has taken him from his grueling days as a foreign medical graduate (recounted in The New Yorker article, The Cowpath to America) to becoming the voice of empathetic medicine. As founding director of Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics at the University of Texas and in his current role as a senior professor at Stanford University, Dr. Verghese is a champion in the field of Medical Humanities. He is passionate about bedside medicine and physical examination and values the human element that these rituals bring to the facelessness of modern medicine.

In an exclusive interview, Tadias Magazine spoke with Abraham Verghese about writing, medicine, the healthcare crisis, and how to lead double lives.

Abraham Verghese (photo by Joanne Chan)

Can you begin by telling us a bit about all the different places that are a part of you?

My identification with place is complicated. Ethnically, I feel very much Indian. My parents are Indian and I feel very conscious of their legacy, But countrywise, I strongly identify with Ethiopia, having grown up there. And then of course, America is the place that welcomes everybody. So this is home unequivocally, and I am very proud to be American. So there are all these different threads that run through my life.

I remember the passage in the book where Hema speaks of Addis as an evolving city whereas Madras seems to have finished evolving. Was that something that struck you as a primary difference between both places?

Yes, when I went to India and lived in Madras, that was one of the things that struck me about the city. Traditions and ways of life were very established in Madras whereas so much was in transition in Addis. And then when I came to America, it was very different again. There’s a scene later in the book where Marion arrives in America and feels completely unprepared for the scale and scope of America.

You also show how, even through its upheavals, Addis was a cosmopolitan city of the twentieth century. You help the reader picture the different peoples who had congregated in Addis. Can you give us a sense of your relationship with Addis?

I don’t have any family in Addis but I do have friends there and I have strong connections to the medical world in Ethiopia. Also, the present Prime Minister of Ethiopia was a medical student one year behind me. When civil war broke out and the military took over the medical school, he became a guerilla fighter and I left. So I have been back twice – once to do an interview with him for a magazine and the other time for a medical symposium.

Could you tell us something about your writing process? You must have drawn a lot on your memories of growing up in Ethiopia but it is also clear you did a lot of research on Ethiopian history and politics.

I think the research happens in parallel with the writing. I was consciously trying to learn more about the Italian time in Ethiopia because it was a very colorful legacy. Every colonial power leaves their stamp on their country and we are very familiar with the English stamp on India or the French stamp on Cameroon but the Italian stamp on Ethiopia is not very well-known. So I spent a lot of time on that. But the research was in parallel with the writing because as I wrote I would stumble on something that I needed to know more about and so that would set me off in another direction. One of the great joys of research is that you find unexpected things in unexpected places. You are looking for one article but you find another right next to it that leads you to include something you might never have otherwise written about. There’s a lot of serendipity.

Elsewhere you talked about the incremental method of writing in which you write a little bit everyday.

I think I was talking about the incremental method of doing anything. If you do a little of something every day, you gradually get better at it. Instead of finding great blocks of time, you just have to find a little time every day.

So do you have a daily writing practice?

Not really. I write whenever I can and sometimes it winds up being everyday for several days at a stretch of time but sometimes I cannot get to it every day.

I also heard that you have a room on the campus, something like a secret bunker, where you can go and write. Tell me it is true and not a legend.

No, it is true. When I took this position I negotiated for a second office, separate from the student-related, that I could disappear into.

And you also negotiated two days a week to write.

Well, everybody here has protected time to do their research and so during my protected time, instead of going to a lab and doing experiments, I go to my lab and conduct my kind of experiments. In fiction, nonfiction. In any kind of writing, really.

How important is it as a writer to have a place for writing?

I actually don’t think it is very important. I think people make much too much of having a place and how it has to be just right. I can actually write anywhere and often do. The most important thing when you are trying to write is to simply sit down and try to write, it doesn’t matter where. If you are waiting for the right environment before you can write, then you are probably not prepared to write.

What would you say is the unlikeliest place that you have written in?

(Laughs) Probably airports. Everyone’s waiting to take off and frustrated that we are late or whatever and I am barely aware that anything is going on.

Pico Iyer talks about airports as the ultimate postmodern metropolis. He probably gets a lot of writing done in airports as well.

I am not surprised. He travels a whole lot more than I do.

In fact, in his book Global Soul, he talks about a new generation of transnationals who belong to so many cultures that they belong to nowhere. He calls them Nowherians, or fulltime citizens of nowhere. Do you think you are a global soul?

I feel I am not completely a global soul. I have sequential interactions with different countries and even within the US, I have steadily migrated from Tennessee to Iowa to Texas to California now. I hope this is the last stop. I hope I am not destined to go to Guam and Hawaii!

But even when our migrations are sequential, our memories are not, right?

Yes, very true. They are seamless and overlapping and the only constant is you. You are the only one linking the different places.

There is that beautiful passage in the book where you talk about how listening to Tizita takes the narrator right back to Ethiopia, whether he is in Adams Morgan or in Khartoum.

Yes, music is so mysterious that way in its connection to the brain and its ability to transform us. We all probably have a song that can transport us back to a different part of our life. And it is very difficult to make that song come alive for someone else us. I could not bring the song to the reader but I could try to bring that sense of identification, the nostalgia that it evoked. And of course, that song [tizita] itself is about nostalgia. I worried a great deal about whether I could pull it off. But we all have our tizitas, our songs of some kind.

To get back to the subject of medicine and writing. You speak in this book as well as in interviews about the ritual of examining the patient. Examining the patient is a lot like reading, isn’t it, with the patient as the text?

Yes, but it’s also much more than that. At one level the patient is a text to decode, a mystery to unravel, and that is certainly important, it’s the most attractive part of being a diagnostician. But this is not a natural relationship, between the doctor and the patient. In fact, it is terribly unnatural. They are coming to you because they are in some sort of distress and you are meeting them because you have made this career choice to help people and so it’s a very strange relationship and even though it seems routine, there is nothing routine about it. Its’ really quite loaded. So after you meet them and decode the text, you are, by your presence, by your engagement, providing the kind of comfort no one else can provide. The analogy I use is “when you are drowning, the only person who can save you is someone who knows how to swim”.

I find it terribly important to be conscious of that dynamic, even if the patient is not. Somebody else once described this by saying “one of our roles is to save the patient from their nihilistic tendencies.” A sick individual’s instinct is taking him or her towards nihilism, to imagine that the world is cruel, that there is nothing worth living for, and the doctor’s job is to counter that.

Have there been other writers who write about medicine whom you count among your influences?

There are a lot of writers who write well about the business of medicine. Atul Gawande for instance. And I have always admired that kind of writing. But I feel that by writing fiction about medicine, you are conveying a higher form of truth. I guess that’s my bias. (Laughs) If you pull it off well, like in “The Citadel” for instance, then you have captured the reader’s imagination. If I manage to get you to enter the world of the novel and completely forget your everyday life, you don’t just find out about medicine, you live medicine. You live it through Hema, you live it through Ghosh, through Marion, and you come out at the other end and its 2009, but you feel like you have lived a lifetime and you have all the lessons of a lifetime. So I am drawn to those fictional narratives, not necessarily written by physicians, but which convey medicine in a convincing and inspiring way.

And in many ways, reclaiming the humanity of medicine is also the focus of your field of medicine, isn’t it? Can you tell us a bit about why that is important?

I think we live in an age of tremendous fracturing in medical care. It’s very difficult to find one person to take care of you, you end up going to six different people. We are in great danger of getting lost in the technology. We can easily mistake data for wisdom but it is not the same as wisdom. So I have been emphasizing the physican-patient relationship, that this interaction is timeless. No matter how routine it seems, no matter how many imagings and scans can help us see the patient inside out, we still need our presence with the patient. We should never underestimate the patient’s desire to get some help and that subtext of wanting comfort to be comforted, and that all-important ritual of baring their soul and baring their body and allowing you to touch them. And if you shortchange all that, you lose the patient’s faith.

Is there more attention paid to medical humanities now than, say, fifty years before?

I think there is more conscious attention to it as a field of study. It is amazing to me that there is a label that says “medical humanities” on it. But it’s a double-edged sword because medical humanities as a discipline has been hijacked by the English literature and semantics people. In many medical schools, the medical humanities division is run by someone with a Ph.d in English Literature and they have made this into a discipline that I worry is getting disconnected from the field of medicine. Some of those people look down on a physician who wants to teach medical humanities as if the physician does not have the right credentials for teaching this. And I wonder what is their credential to teach this, if they have never walked in a physician’s shoes?

I ran a program on medical humanities in San Antonio and I felt that my mission there was to restore medical humanities to medicine and take it out of the abstract. I am not against someone getting a Ph.d in medical semiotics and breaking down narrative and all that, but let’s not confuse that with talking to a medical student who is trying to picture himself at the bedside of a dying patient and introducing that student to Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich. And that’s what medical humanities is to me.

In a way it actually mirrors the other disconnect, the one between patients and doctors at the bedside.

That is exactly right. They are parallel disconnects and in both cases there is a hubris – “don’t talk to us about medicine, we know all about it though we have never seen a patient, and we have no idea what a medical student is going through, we know what’s best for them, we are going to teach them about medical humanity.”

What do you think of Obama’s vision for healthcare and how do you think that will affect medical humanities?

I am convinced that some change is forthcoming. But at what level? The bottom-line is that this is a very expensive healthcare system. And I worry that Obama’s plan is to expand coverage and do all these wonderful things but he’s going to find the money for it, not by saving costs but by saying, well if we do preventive medicine, we will save this much money; if we do IT, we will save so much money. And all those are laudable but it’s somewhat pie in the sky. I think what we really need to do is cut costs. But every dollar spent on healthcare is a dollar of income for someone. So when you try and cut costs as Hillary Clinton tried to do, you are taking away income from doctors and pharmaceutical companies and x-ray manufacturers, and you run into this buzz-saw of lobbying that will simply decimate you. So Obama is trying to sidestep that by not addressing the cost issue, but I really think the hard solutions are painful, and will cause a lot of people to make less money than they are making and that will make them unhappy but I really don’t think there is another real solution. Frankly, we badly need more primary healthcare providers so that when you are ill you can go to your doctor. But right now there are more people who can put a catheter up your coronary arteries than treat you if you have the common cold. I think as a nation we have to understand that we cannot replace the presence of the physician with machines.

You have a fulltime job as a doctor and then you have this other life as a writer. How do you balance both – what does a writer need to balance two completely different lives?

See, I don’t accept that premise, that these are two different lives. I see it as one seamless life. I am always puzzled when people make this distinction between writer and physician. Really, its all one enterprise. But in terms of getting a piece of writing out there, the fact that I am a physician has nothing to do with it and putting MD next to my name would be irrelevant. So in that sense, if you were asking me what is the primary ingredient a writer needs, whether they are also a doctor or an actor or a garbage collector, I think it comes down to perseverance, and the willingness to revise revise revise until you get it right. The art is really in the revision.

—
About the Author:
Shahnaz Habib is a freelance writer, based in Brooklyn.

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News

Kenenisa Bekele Wins World Distance Double (Video Interview)

August 23, 2009 Tadias Magazine 8 Comments

Above: Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele won a historic distance
double at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin.

Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff

Published: Sunday, August 23, 2009

New York (Tadias) – Ethiopian Olympic Champion Kenenisa Bekele won the gold medal in the 5000m race in Berlin on Sunday, marking the first time an athlete has ever won distance double at the IAAF World Athletics Championships. He won the 10,000-meter final race last Monday.

The reigning double Olympic champion finished the race in 13 minutes 17.09 seconds.

We congratulate Kenenisa Bekele on his unprecedented victory!

Video Interview: Kenenisa Bekele 5k Champ 2009 (Flotrack)

Track and Field Videos on Flotrack

Related:
VIDEO: Kenenisa Bekele wins 10000 meters in Berlin (EthioTube.net)

Flotrack’s IAAF Coverage (August 23, 2009)

Interviews, Podcast

Queen of Sheba Represents Ethiopia at Choice Eats 2009 (Tadias TV)

April 13, 2009 Lifestyle Tadias 2 Comments

Tadias TV
Cover photo by Kidane Mariam for Tadias Magazine

New York – The following video shows the second Choice Eats tasting event organized by The Village Voice, the nation’s first and largest alternative newsweekly. Among those dishing out delicious and eclectic cuisine was Philipos Mengistu, owner and Executive Chef of Queen of Sheba, and his wife, Sara. The event took place on Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at the historic 69th Armory on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. Enjoy!

Opinion

Former US Ambassador to Ethiopia Highlights Tadias on His Blog

April 8, 2009 Tadias Magazine

Above: US Ambassador David Shinn giving a talk on US Policy
in the Horn of Africa at the 2009 OSA mid-year conference in
Washington D.C, Howard University. Credit: American
Chronicle.

Source: The official blog of Ambassador David Shinn

The Ambassador writes: Donald N. Levine, Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Chicago, recently mentioned me in his article The Obama Presidency & Ethiopia: Time for Fresh Thought, New Departures in Tadias Magazine. According to its website, Tadias (which means ‘hi,’ ‘what’s up?’ or ‘how are you?’) is ‘the leading lifestyle and business publication devoted exclusively to the Ethiopian-American community in the United States.’ Having recently celebrated its sixth year of publication, Tadias “is also a medium of communication for those who have academic, business, professional or personal interest in the Ethiopian-American community.” Read more.

From File: The Obama Presidency & Ethiopia

President Barack Obama (center) and Prime Minister
Meles Zenawi (top right) at the Group of 20 summit
meeting in London.

Tadias Magazine
Time for Fresh Thought
By Donald N. Levine
Published: Monday, March 23, 2009

New York (Tadias) – Throughout 2008 I published articles on links between Ethiopia’s needs and the promises of an Obama presidency. Now that President Obama is in office, what might we project? What, that is, might it mean to reconsider U.S. relations with Ethiopia in ways that align them with the orientations of an Obama presidency?

Eyeing policies the Obama administration has already implemented and earlier statements suggests at least half a dozen aims: 1) employ state-of-the art technologies to advance human welfare; 2) develop energy sources to replace fossil fuels, and in other ways conserve natural environments; 3) link upgraded education and health services with a strengthened economy; 4) avoid sharp polarities of pronouncement and of conduct; 5) curtail terrorist tactics, but in smart ways; and 6) restore moral direction for a market economy and public service from the citizenry. In what follows I explore implications of those principles and priorities for U.S. relations with Ethiopia. Read more.

Art, Featured

Interview: Teodross “Teo” Avery

December 19, 2008 Tadias Magazine 6 Comments

Above: Ethiopian-American musician Teodross “Teo” Avery is
creating his own niche in the American hip-hop jazz scene.

Tadias Magazine
By Adey Tsega

Published: Friday, December 19, 2008

New York (Tadias) – What does Teodross “Teo” Avery have in common with jazz giants Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, and Arturo Sandoval? They all have graced the stage of The Blue Note, one of New York’s legendary jazz clubs in the heart of Greenwich Village.

Avery, a talented Ethiopian-American musician is carving his own niche in hip-hop jazz, and all eyes were on him as he played his tenor saxophone with confidence and ease, seamlessly transitioning between his original work and pieces from Earth Wind & Fire, John Coltrane and Mos Def.

Avery has recorded and collaborated with other powerhouse musicians including: Aretha Franklin, Lauryn Hill, Shakira, Wu Tang Clan, and Amy Winehouse. Films such as Love Jones, Brown Sugar and Beauty Shop also carry songs he has either written or produced.

His own lyrics entitled New Day New Groove and My Generation capture the proactive, idealistic and determined energy of his generation.

Avery’s strong interest in music developed at an early age. He was born and raised in the Bay Area, California, from an Ethiopian mother and African American father. His parents encouraged his interest in music by exposing him to a wide variety of music. His mother fondly recalls the comments of a Bay Area piano store owner as perhaps the earliest testament of Avery’s destiny as a musician. Intervening on behalf of the then 4 year old, crying hysterically at his mother’s stern words not to touch any of the pianos at the store, the owner gave little Teo permission to play on any of the pianos for as long as he liked, telling his mother to encourage her son’s interest in music and that he may become a great musician some day.

Avery credits his father as the earliest and most significant supporter of his artistic aspirations. His father bought him his first guitar at the age of 5 and enrolled him in classical guitar lessons. After years of guitar lessons, Avery developed a strong interest in jazz and later settled on the saxophone as his instrument of choice. His father recalls that in his early teens, Avery often took his horn to Bay Area jazz concerts and joined the likes of Nat Adderley, Jimmy Smith and Art Blakey on stage.

Avery went on to win a full scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music at the age of 17 and later earned his Masters degree in Music from NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education. His talent and versatility is demonstrated by the diversity of artists he has worked with including: Matchbox Twenty, Leela James, Talib Kweli, Ethiopian artists Abegaz Shiota and Henok Temesgen, Dee Dee Bridgewater and the late great Betty Carter, among many others.

I had a chance to chat with Teo about his music and his upcoming show in Washington D.C. at the Blues Alley.

Teodross “Teo” Avery

How would you describe your musical style?

My style of hip-hop jazz is instrumental… hip-hop beats with jazzy horns on top. I also mix jazz with house music, funk and Brazilian music. Sometimes I feature rappers, but most times I feature the instruments.

Tell us about your latest album. Why is it titled “Bridging the Gap”?

Bridging The Gap is a concept that I came up with after witnessing the huge gap between jazz and hip-hop. There’s a group of people that like jazz but often are ignored. They are the same jazz listeners that listen to Tribe Called Quest, Mos Def, Common, and Pete Rock & CL Smooth. Bridging The Gap represents that link.

You give a tribute to John Coltrane at your shows. How has he influenced your music?

Well, John Coltrane single-handedly influenced me to become a jazz musician. His music is full of love and emotion, and it’s always challenging. When I listen to John Coltrane, I hear a love for God and Coltrane’s desire to become a better person. I’ve always been a person that likes challenges and I’ve always wanted to go beneath the surface.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your life as an artist?

The most rewarding time is when I see people connect to a song that I wrote. See, people don’t know the struggle that artists have to overcome before they’re inspired to write songs. They hear the final product. Any artist that has struggled in life to be here today and to tell their story through their instrument is lying if they say that they don’t appreciate fans that love their art. The fans make it all worth it!

Teo, photo from teodrossavery.com

Any plans to work with Ethiopian artists?

I have already worked with Ethiopian artists. I played with Abegaz Shiota and Henok Temesgen. They’re good friends of mine. We attended The Berklee College of Music together. Mulatu Astatke has expressed some interest in working together. I also played a concert in Oakland with Mahmoud Ahmed. Wow! He gave a great show.

————-
Teo will perform at the Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., on February 3rd, 2009.

Download the “Bridging the Gap” mix tape at www.teodrossavery.com. For more information on Teodross Avery’s upcoming show in D.C., please visit www.bluesalley.com.

About the Author:
Adey Tsega is an Epidemiologist based in New York City.

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The Great Ethiopian Composer – St. Yared

August 9, 2008 Tadias Magazine 5 Comments

Tadias Magazine
By Ayele Bekerie, PhD

Aug 9, 2008

New York (TADIAS) – In his recent song dedicated to the Ethiopian Millennium and entitled Musika Heiwete (Music is My Life), the renowned Ethiopia’s rising pop singer, Teddy Afro, traces the geneaology of his music to classical Zema or chant compositions of St. Yared, the great Ethiopian composer, choreographer and poet, who lived in Aksum almost 1500 years ago.

Teddy, who is widely known for his songs mixed with reggae rhythms and local sounds, heart warming and enlightening lyrics, shoulder shaking and foot stomping beats, blends his latest offering with sacred musical terms, such as Ge’ez, Izil, and Ararary, terms coined by St. Yared to represent the three main Zema compositions.

In so doing, he is echoing the time tested and universalized tradition of modernity that has been pioneered and institutionalized by Yared. Teddy seems to realize the importance of seeking a new direction in Ethiopian popular music by consciously establishing links to the classical and indigenous tradition of modernity of St. Yared. In other words, Teddy Afro is setting an extraordinary example of reconfiguring and contributing to contemporary musical tradition based on Yared’s Zema.

Teddy Afro

An excellent example of what I call tradition of modernity, a tradition that contains elements of modernity or the perpetuation of modernity informed by originative tradition, is the annual celebration of St. Yared’s birthday in Debre Selam Qidist Mariam Church in Washington D.C. in the presence of a large number of Ethiopian Americans.

The Debteras regaled in fine Ethiopian costume that highlights the tri-colors of the Ethiopian flag, accompanied by tau-cross staff, sistra and drum, have chanted the appropriate Zema and danced the Aquaquam or sacred dance at the end of a special mass – all in honor of the great composer.

The purpose of this article is to narrate and discuss the life history and artistic accomplishments of the great St. Yared. We argue that St Yared was a great scholar who charted a modernist path to Ethiopian sense of identity and culture. His musical invention, in particular, established a tradition of cultural dynamism and continuity.

Figure 1: An artist rendering of St Yared while chanting Zema accompanied by sistrum, tau-cross staff. The three main zema chants of Ge’ez, Izil, and Araray which are represented by three birds. Digua, a book of chant, atronse (book holder), a drum, and a processional cross are also seen here. Source: Methafe Diggua Zeqidus Yared. Addis Ababa: Tensae Printing Press, 1996.

Zema or the chant tradition of Ethiopia, particularly the chants of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, is attributed to St. Yared, a composer and a choreographer who lived in Aksum in the 6th century AD. He is credited for inventing the zema of the Church; the chant that has been in use continuously for the last almost 1500 years.

It is indeed a classical tradition both musically and culturally. St Yared’s chants are characterized as subtle, spiritually uplifting, and euphonic. St Yared’s composition draws its fame both in its endurance and institutionalization of a tradition to mark the rhythm of life, the life of the faithful.

By composing chants for all natural and spiritual occasions, St. Yared has also laid down the foundation for common purpose and plurality among various ethnic, linguistic and regional groupings of the Ethiopian people. Elaborate visual representation of chants, the introduction of additional musical instruments, movements and performances by Ethiopian scholars have further enriched and secured the continuity and dynamism of the tradition to the present.

Furthermore, the music has become the central defining ritualistic feature of all the major fasts and feasts, appropriately expressing and performing joys and sorrows with the faithful in the or outside of the Church.

Saint Yared, the great Ethiopian scholar, was born on April 5, 501 A.D. in the ancient city of Aksum. His father’s name was Adam, whereas his mother’s name was Tawkelia. He descended from a line of prominent church scholars. At the age of six, a priest named Yeshaq was assigned as his teacher. However, he turned out to be a poor learner and, as a result, he was sent back to his parents. While he was staying at home, his father passed away and his mother asked her brother, Aba Gedeon, a well known priest-scholar in the church of Aksum Zion, to adopt her son and to take over the responsibility regarding his education.

Aba Gedeon taught The Old and New Testaments. He also translated these and other sacred texts to Ge’ez from Greek, Hebrew and Arabic sources. Even if Aba Gedeon allowed St. Yared to live and study with him, it took him a long time to complete the study of the Book of David. He could not compete with the other children, despite the constant advice he was receiving from his uncle. In fact, he was so poor in his education, kids used to make fun of him. His uncle was so impatient with him and he gave him several lashes for his inability not to compete with his peers.

Realizing that he was not going to be successful with his education, Yared left school and went to Medebay, a town where his another uncle resided. On his way to Medebay, not far from Aksum, he was forced to seek shelter under a tree from a heavy rain, in a place called Maikrah. While he was standing by leaning to the tree, he was immersed in thoughts about his poor performance in his education and his inability to compete with his peers. Suddenly, he noticed an ant, which tried to climb the tree with a load of a seed. The ant carrying a piece of food item made six attempts to climb the tree without success. However, at the seventh trial, the ant was able to successfully climb the tree and unloaded the food item at its destination. Yared watched the whole incident very closely and attentively; he was touched by the determined acts of the ant. He then thought about the accomplishment of this little creature and then pondered why he lacked patience to succeed in his own schooling.

He got a valuable lesson from the ant. In fact, he cried hard and then underwent self-criticism. The ant became his source of inspiration and he decided to return back to school. He realized the advice he received from his uncle was a useful advice to guide him in life. He begged Aba Gedeon to forgive him for his past carelessness. He also asked him to give him one more chance. He wants all the lessons and he is ready to learn.

His teacher, Aba Gedeon then began to teach him the Book of David. Yared not only was taking the lessons, but every day he would stop at Aksum Zion church to pray and to beg his God to show him the light. His prayer was answered and he turned out to be a good student. Within a short period of time, he showed a remarkable progress and his friends noticed the change in him. They were impressed and started to admire him. He completed the Old and New Testaments lessons at a much faster pace. He also finished the rest of lessons ahead of schedule and graduated to become a Deacon. He was fluent in Hebrew and Greek, apart from Ge’ez. Yared became as educated as his uncle and by the young age of fourteen, he was forced to assume the position of his uncle when he died.

Yared’s Zema is mythologized and sacralized to the extent that the composition is seen as a special gift from heaven. One version of the mythology is presented in Ethiopian book Sinkisar, a philosophical treatise, as follows: “When God sought praise on earth, he sent down birds from heaven in the images of angels so that they would teach Yared the music of the heavens in Ge’ez language. The birds sang melodious and heart warming songs to Yared. The birds noticed that Yared was immersed in their singing and then they voiced in Ge’ez:

“O Yared, you are the blessed and respected one; the womb that carried you is praised; the breasts that fed you the food of life are praised.”

Yared was then ascended to the heavens of the heaven, Jerusalem, where twenty-four scholars of the heaven conduct heavenly choruses. St Yared listened to the choruses by standing in the sacred chamber and he committed the music to memory. He then started to sing all the songs that he heard in the sacred chambers of the heaven to the gathered scholars. He then descended back to Aksum and at 9 a.m. (selestu saat) in the morning, inside the Aksum Zion church, he stood by the side of the Tabot (The Arc of the Covenant), raised his hands to heaven, and in high notes, which later labeled Mahlete Aryam (the highest), he sang the following:

“hale luya laab, hale luya lewold, hale luya wolemenfes qidus qidameha letsion semaye sarere wedagem arayo lemusse zekeme yegeber gibra ledebtera.”

With his song, he praised the natural world, the heavens and the Zion. He called the song Mahlete Aryam, which means the highest, referring to the seventh gates of heaven, where God resides. Yared, guided by the Holy Spirit, he saw the angels using drums, horns, sistra, Masinko and harp and tau-cross staff instruments to accompany their songs of praise to God, he decided to adopt these instruments to all the church music and chants.

The chants are usually chanted in conjunction with aquaquam or sacred dance. The following instruments are used for Zema and aquaquam combination: Tau-cross staff, sistra and drum. St Yared pioneered an enduring tradition of Zema. Aquaquam and Qene. These are musical, dance and literary traditions that continue to inform the spiritual and material well being of a significant segment of the Ethiopian population.

It is important to note that, as Sergew Hable Selassie noted “most of Yared’s books have been written for religious purposes.” As a result, historical facts are interspersed with religious sentiments and allegorical renderings.

According to Ethiopian legend, St.Yared obtained the three main Zema scores from three birds. These scores that Yared named Ge’ez, Izil, and Araray were revealed to him as a distraction from a path of destruction. According to oral tradition, Yared was set to ambush a person who repeatedly tried to cheat on his wife. In an attempt to resolve such vexing issue, he decided to kill the intruder. At a place where he camped out for ambush, three birds were singing different melodies. He swiftly lent his ears to the singing. He became too attracted to the singing birds. As a result, he abandoned his plan of ambush. Instead, he began to ponder how he could become a singer like the birds. Persistent practice guided by the echo of the melodies of the birds, fresh in his memory, ultimately paid off. Yared transformed himself to a great singer and composer as well as choreographer. Yared prepared his Zema composition from 548 to 568 AD. He had taught for over eleven years as an ordained priest.

Yared’s zema chants have established a classic Zema Mahlet tradition, which is usually performed in the outer section of the Church’s interior. The interior has three parts. The Arc of the Covenant is kept in Meqdes or the holiest section.

EMPEROR GEBRE MESQEL, THE CULTURAL PHILANTHROPIST

The Ethiopian emperor of the time was Emperor Gebre Mesqel (515-529), the son of the famous Emperor Kaleb, who in successfully, though briefly, reunited western and eastern Ethiopia on both sides of the Red Sea in 525 AD.

Emperor Gabra Masqal was a great supporter of the arts; he particularly established a special relationship with St. Yared, who was given unconditional and unlimited backing from him. The Emperor would go to church to listen to the splendid chants of St. Yared.

The Emperor was ruling at the peak of Aksumite civilization. He consolidated the gains made by his father and consciously promoted good governance and church scholarship. Furthermore, he presided over a large international trade both from within and without Africa.

According to Ethiopian history, Emperor Gabra Mesqel built the monastery of Debre Damo in Tigray, northern Ethiopia in the sixth century AD. It is the site where one of the nine saints from Syria, Abuna Aregawi settled. St Yared visited and performed his Zema at the monastery. The chants and dance introduced by Yared at the time of Gebra Mesqel are still being used in all the churches of Ethiopia, thereby establishing for eternity a classical and enduring tradition.

ST YARED’S MUSICAL COMPOSITION

St Yared created five volumes of chants for major church related festivals, lents and other services and these volumes are:

The Book of Digua and Tsome Digua, the book of chants for major church holidays and Sundays, whereas the book of Tsome Digua contain chants for the major lent (fasting) season (Abiy Tsom), holidays and daily prayer, praise and chant procedures.

Digua is derived from the word Digua, which means to write chants of sorrow and tearful songs. Digua sometimes is also called Mahelete Yared or the songs of Yared, acknowledging the authorship of the chants to Yared. Regarding Digua’s significance Sergew Hable Selassie writes, “Although it was presented in the general form of poetry, there are passages relating to theology, philosophy, history and ethics.”

The Book of Meraf, chants of Sabat, important holidays, daily prayers and praises; also chants for the month of fasting.

The Book of Zimare, contain chants to be sang after Qurban (offerings) that is performed after Mass. Zemare was composed at Zur Amba monastery.

The Book of Mewasit, chants to the dead. Yared composed Mewasit alongside with Zimare.

The Book of Qidasse, chants to bless the Qurban (offerings).

Figure 2. An illustrated Zema chant text and notes from the Book of Digua (Metshafe Digua Zeqidus Yared), p. 3.

Yared completed these compositions in nine years. All his compositions follow the three musical scales (kegnit), which he used to praise, according to Ethiopian tradition, his creator, who revealed to him the heavenly chants of the twenty-four heavenly scholars.

Figure 3. The front cover of Metshafe Digua Zeqidus Yared (Book of Digua). The cover shows the five volumes of Yared’s Zema composition: Digua, Tsome Digua, Miraf, Zimare, and Mewasit. Processional Ethiopian cross, drum, sistrum, and tau-cross staff are also illustrated in the cover.

Each of these categories are further classified with three musical scales (Kegnitoch) that are reported to contain all the possible musical scales:

Ge’ez, first and straight note. It is described in its musical style as hard and imposing. Scholars often refer to it as dry and devoid of sweet melody.

Izel, melodic, gentle and sweet note, which is often chanted after Ge’ez. It is also described as affective tone suggesting intimation and tenderness.

Ararai, third and melodious and melancholic note often chanted on somber moments, such as fasting and funeral mass.

Musical scholars regard these scales as sufficient to encompass all the musical scores of the world. These scales are sources of chants or songs of praise, tragedy or happiness. These scales are symbolized as the father, the son and the Holy Spirit in the tradition.

The composer Yared wrote the notes of the Digua on parchment and he also composed ten musical notations. The notations were fully developed as musical written charts in the 17th century AD. This took place much earlier than the composition of the musical note using seven alphabetic letters within the Western tradition. St Yared named the ten musical notations as follows: Yizet, Deret, Rikrik, Difat, Cheret, Qenat, Hidet, Qurt, Dirs, and, Anbir.

The ten notations have their own styles of arrangement and they are collectively called Sirey, which means lead notations or roots to chants. The notations are depicted with lines or chiretoch (marks).

Names and signs of St. Yared zema chant. The names are written in Ge’ez in the second column. The signs are in the third column.

According to Lisane Worq Gebre Giorgis, Zema notes for Digua were fully developed in the 16th century AD by the order of Atse Gelawedos. The composers were assembled in the Church of Tedbabe Mariam, which was led by Memhir Gera and Memhir Raguel. The chants, prior to the composition of notations, learned and studied orally. In other words, the chants were sang and passed on without visual guidance. Oral training used to take up to 70 years to master all the chants, such as Digua (40 years), Meraf (10 years), Mewasit (5 years), Qidasse (10 years), and Zimare (15 years). The chant appeared in the written form made it easier for priests to study and master the various chants within a short period of time.

The ten Zemawi notations are designed to correspond with the ten commandments of Genesis and the ten strings of harp. The notes, however, were not restricted to them. In addition, they have developed notations known as aganin, seyaf, akfa, difa, gifa, fiz, ayayez, chenger, mewgat, goshmet, zentil, aqematil, anqetqit, netiq, techan, and nesey.

The composition of the Digua Zema chant with notations took seven years, whereas mewasit’s chants were completed in one year, zemare’s in two years, qidasse in two years, and meraf remained oral (without notations) for a long time until it also got its own notations.

The two leading scholars were fully recognized and promoted by the King for their accomplishments. They were given the title of azaze and homes were built for them near Tedbabe Mariam Church. While their contributions are quite significant, St Yared remains as the key composer of all the Zemas of the chants. He literally transformed the verses and texts of the Bible into musical utterances.

Figure 4. A sample page from St Yared’s zema or chant composition from Metsafe Digua Zeqidus Yared.

The ten chants are assigned names that fully described the range, scale and depth of Zema. Difat is a method of chanting where the voice is suppressed down in the throat and inhaling air. Hidet is a chant by stretching one’s voice; it is resembled to a major highway or a continuous water flow in a creek. Qinat is the highlighted last letter of a chant; it is chanted loud and upward in a dramatic manner and ends abruptly. Yizet is when letters or words are emphasized with louder chant in another wise regular reading form of chant. Qurt is a break from an extended chant that is achieved by withholding breathing. Chiret also highlights with louder notes letters or words in between regular readings of the text. The highlighted chant is conducted for a longer period of time. Rikrik is a layered and multiple chants conducted to prolong the chant. Diret is a form of chant that comes out of the chest. These eight chant forms have non-alphabetic signs. The remaining two are dirs and anber which are represented by Ethiopic or Ge’ez letters.

Yared’s composition also includes modes of chant and performance. There are four main modes. Qum Zema is exclusively vocal and the chant is not accompanied by body movement or swinging of the tau-cross staff. The chant is usually performed at the time of lent. Zimame chants are accompanied by body movements and choreographed swinging of the staff. Merged, which is further divided into Neus Merged and Abiy Merged are chanted accompanied by sistrum, drums, and shebsheba or sacred dance. The movements are fast, faster and fastest in merged, Neus Merged, and abiy merged respectively. Abiy Merged is further enhanced by rhythmic hand clappings. Tsifat chant highlights the drummers who move back and forth and around the Debteras. They also jump up and down, particularly with joyous occasions like Easter and Christmas.

St. Yared’s sacred music is truly classical, for it has been in use for over a thousand years and it has also established a tradition that continues to inform the spiritual and material lives of the people. It is in fact the realization of the contribution of St.Yared that earned him sainthood. Churches are built in his name and the first school of music that was established in the mid twentieth century in Addis Ababa is named after him. By the remarkable contribution of St. Yared, Ethiopia has achieved a tradition of modernity. It is the responsibility of the young generation to build upon it and to advance social, economic, and cultural development in the new millennium.

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Publisher’s Note: This article is well-referenced and those who seek the references should contact Professor Ayele Bekerie directly at: ab67@cornell.edu

About the Author:

Ayele Bekerie was born and raised in Ethiopia. He earned his Ph.D. in African American Studies at Temple University in 1994. He has written and published in scholarly journals, such as, Journal of Egyptology and African Civilizations (ANKH), Journal of Black Studies, The International Journal of Africana Studies, and Imhotep. He is also the author of Ethiopic: an African Writing System, a book about the history and principles of Ethiopic (Ge’ez). He is a Professor at Cornell University’s Africana Studies and Research Center. He is a regular contributor to Tadias Magazine.
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Jolie to Build Daughter Zahara a Clinic in Ethiopia

August 6, 2008 admin 3 Comments

By Tadias Staff
Photo – Jolie with daughter Zahara, NYC, 2007 (Purseblog.com)

Published: Wednesday, August 6, 2008

New York (Tadias) – Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie is reportedly planning to build an AIDS clinic in Ethiopia, her adopted daughter Zahara’s country of birth.

“We will be building a Tuberculosis/AIDS clinic in Ethiopia. The one we plan for Zahara to take over when she is older,” Jolie told Hello magazine, which printed its world exclusive pictures of her newborn twins Knox and Vivienne earlier this week.

Jolie and her partner Brad Pitt already have a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel, who was born in Namibia in 2006. In addition to Zahara (aged three from Ethiopia), they are also adopted parents to Maddox (six-year-old) from Cambodia, and Pax (four-year-old) from Vietnam.

According to Contactmusic.com, the clinic in Ethiopia is an initiative of the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, a charity the celebrity couple established in 2006 for international humanitarian aid.

Jolie also has plans for her Asian children. “The next trip for our foundation will most likely be Asia to follow up on the situation in Burma and our work in Cambodia. The boys have been asking to go there, so we will take them when Knox and Vivienne are a bit older,” she added.

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Portland Family Enjoys a Taste of Ethiopia

August 5, 2008 admin

By Angela Obery

Published: August 5, 2008

Portland, Oregon (Statesman Journal) – Looking back on local family trips, I must admit that many of them revolve around food.

After all, we have to eat; we might as well make the meal an adventure!

Recently while visiting friends in Portland, my husband, sons and I were invited to dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant.

I was eager to see my old friend but wary about his ability to choose a child-friendly restaurant. A confirmed bachelor, I was unsure if he understood the intricacies of dining with a 3-year-old.

Holding the printed directions in one hand and a map in another, I navigated while my husband drove into a north Portland neighborhood previously unknown to us.

Parking on a side street and walking past other business, we saw the chosen restaurant — it had an old sign welcoming us to the Queen of Sheba Ethiopian Bar.

I momentarily thought our bachelor friend has steered us terribly wrong, however a second look unveiled an additional sign that read: “and Restaurant.’

I silently sighed as my husband and I shared a look of uncertainty.

Slowly stepping through the front door we were greeted by the restaurant owner and immediately shown to a roomy table by the front window.

Glancing around the small room, I saw a few other tables seated with groups including children. The place was a buzz with activity and so the adventure began.

Reading the menu, I was confused. Ordering would not be easy. Although the menu gave short descriptions of the offerings I still had no real sense of what was being offered.

Meats, vegetables, lentils and spices were all clearly named, but where as Japanese, Italian, and French bring certain flavors to mind, I had no background knowledge to consider Ethiopian.

Sensing our general confusion, the waitress was incredibly helpful when ordering. She told us which dishes were favorites with other families with small children and she guided our order to include several items considered mild and two with a bit more spice for the adults in our group.

As she walked away from the table I knew only that, among others, we would be trying dishes #1, #6 and #27.

When the meal arrived, the adventure continued as all the items were served family style on one large platter.

Injera, the traditional flat bread of Ethiopia, was provided and everyone tore off small pieces so as to scoop up the entrée and side dishes. My 3-year-old watched all the adults dig in and shyly asked, “Where are the forks?”

He seemed amused by the idea that no one would use utensils at this meal.

Injera is a flat, spongy bread and after several bites with the meal, my 6-year-old then ate several more bites of the bread alone. Holding up a small piece he commented, “It looks like a pancake, but it doesn’t taste like a pancake.”

I agreed.

Our party continues to scoop, wrap and dip as the meal continued. I found my sons and I most enjoyed the wat, or stew, of potatoes, carrots and beans. My husband favored the chicken and mushroom combination, while our friends ate up most of the spicier dishes.

The time passed quickly between eating and conversation and, before I knew it, the platter before us was almost wiped clean.

Paying our bill and heading out into the pleasant evening air I was pleased to have ventured out of our comfort zone with my family to try this new restaurant.

Time had passed since our last gathering with this old friend, but the feelings of care and loyalty for him are still strong.

Mix that up with two kiddos who are willing to try anything new and you have the perfect recipe for an adventurous Kid Trips to Portland, or to Ethiopia, or to whatever lies ahead.

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Angela Obery lives in Salem with her husband and two young sons. Look for the Kid Trips column each Tuesday in this section. Contact Angela at Kid Trips, the Statesman Journal, P.O. Box 13009, Salem, OR 97309-3009. Letters can be faxed to (503) 399-6706 or e-mailed to sjkidtrips@yahoo.com.

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Pankhurst’s Memories of the Aksum Obelisk Issue

August 2, 2008 Tadias Magazine 3 Comments

Personal Memories of the Aksum Obelisk Issue (Capital Ethiopia)

By Richard Pankhurst

Part Three

Saturday, August 2, 2008

We saw in the last article how the original Aksum Obelisk Committee, an entirely private body composed of less than a dozen individuals, albeit people of good will, helped to launch a movement for the return of the Aksum obelisk which Mussolini had looted from Ethiopia a generation or so earlier: Please read on:

The Obelisk Return movement at this time was not without a useful international dimension. Having formerly been Director of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies several decades earlier I was on good personal terms with most of the international scholars of Ethiopian affairs, many of whom, when approached, expressed support for our campaign. This enabled me to issue a succession of statements to the essentially sympathetic press – announcing that such and such Ethiopianist was demanding the Obelisk’s repatriation. This helped to keep the issue virtually every week in the public eye.

Such supporters, who rallied to the cause, included Professor Sven Rubenson from Sweden, Professor Angelo Del Boca from Italy, Professors Richard Greenfield, Christopher Clapham and Frederick Halliday from Britain, Professors Donald Crummey, Frederick Gamst, Pascal Imperato, and Alberto Sbacchi from the United States, Maria Rait and Yuri Kobischanov from Russia, Hagai Erlich from Israel, Viraj Gubta from India, Katsuyoshi Fakui from Japan – and many, many others. Support was likewise announced from not a few prominent writers, among them Wilfred Thesiger, Thomas Pakenham, David Buxton, Graham Hancock, and Germaine Greer, as well as Rita Marley, widow of Bob Marley, and Lutz Becker, producer of the remarkable historical film The Lion of Judah, as well as the two leading British historians of modern Italy: William Deakin and Denis Mack Smith. Mrs Winthrop Boswell, an American scholar who had some years earlier used the IES library to study ancient Ethiopian-Irish relations, most generously supplied us with much appreciated “Return Our Obelisk” car stickers. They bore a representation of an Aksum obelisk as reproduced by the Scottsih traveller James Bruce in 1790.

The movement also rallied extensive support among the Ethiopian Diaspora, most notably from Ato Samuel Ferenje in Canada, Dr. Asfawossen Asrate in Germany, and Ato Zaudie Haile Mariam in Sweden, as well as Professors Achamele Debele, Ashenafe Kebede, Ephraim Isaac, Getachew Haile, Syum Gabre Egziabher, and Ato Kassahun Chekole, all in the United States. Support was also received from prominent Americans of Italian decent, among them our friend Professor Pascal Imperato. Many articles on the Obelisk likewise appeared in the Italian media, many supportive ones from the heroic pen of Professor Angelo Del Boca. Other writings on the obelisk, by the present writer and others, also appeared in the Ethiopian Diaspora press, the Ethiopian Review, the Ethiopian Register and others. As well as, in Ethiopia itself, in Addis Tribune and other papers.

The Obelisk Return Movement gained further impetus once again as a result of an Anniversary – this time the Centenary of the Battle of Adwa of 1896. In the lead-up to that anniversary Professor Andreas Eshete, Chairman of the Ethiopian Centenary Committee, and an old family friend, seized the occasion to appeal to the Italian Government, on Ethiopian TV, for the monument’s restitution – and was joined by Fitawrari Amede Lemma and several other members of the Obelisk Return Committee. A few days later the Ethiopian Parliament held a Public Hearing on the Obelisk, the first such hearing in its history, at which several of us urged the case for repatriation. We were joined in this by Professor Marco Vigoni, a teacher at Addis Ababa’s Italian School.

Then, on 8 February 1996, the Parliament voted unanimously – to demand the Obelisk’s return – just as its predecessor, the Emperor’s Parliament, had done three decades earlier.

The cause of the Obelisk’s restitution, first voiced by a few isolated individuals in different parts of the globe, had thus at last become official Ethiopian Government policy; and a matter to be discussed at an inter-governmental level – but that is another story.
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Tadias Added to Index for Google News

August 1, 2008 Tadias Magazine 3 Comments

Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff

Friday, August 1, 2008

New York (TADIAS) – Tadias Magazine has been added to the index for Google News. The Ethiopian-American publication, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year, joins Google’s global network of original content and news publishers — including some of the top news agencies in the world, such as the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, UK Press Association and the Canadian Press.

Founded in January 2003, Tadias Magazine is the leading lifestyle and business publication devoted exclusively to the Ethiopian-American community in the United States. The word Tadias is a popular casual greeting among Ethiopians. It means “hello”, “hi,” “what’s up?” or “how are you?”

The magazine serves as a medium of communication for those who have academic, business, professional or personal interest in the Ethiopian-American community.
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Hello Magazine Wins Bid for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s Twins Pics

August 1, 2008 admin 1 Comment

By Tadias Staff

Published: Friday, August 1, 2008

New York (Tadias) – Hello Magazine has won an exclusive deal for the first photos of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s newborn twins, Knox and Vivienne, born on July 13 at the Lenval hospital in southern France.

The celebrity couple are also adopted parents to Ethiopian American Zahara (aged three), Maddox (six-year-old) from Cambodia, and Pax (four-year-old) from Vietnam. They already have a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel, who was born in Namibia in 2006.

An insider for Hello!, which outbid rival magazine OK! for the rights for the photos told ITN: “This is one of the publishing sensations of the decade – Brad and Angelina are the dream couple of the glossy magazine world and we expect to triple our circulation because of the public’s fascination and interest in the couple and their children.”

The magazine will be published on Monday, August 4.

Ethiopian Business and Lifestyle