Aka Could I have been any luckier?
My love for Ethiopian music started at a very young age. Both my parents loved music, my mother was a huge fan of traditional music whereas my father loved the modern. Between the two of them I was made aware of the sounds ranging from Kassa Tessema and Asnaketch Werqu to Mahmoud Ahmed and Alemayehu Eshete.
My father loved Alemayehu Eshete! I remember distinctly my father turning the reel-to-reel tape on and the soulful and soothing voice of Alemayehu Eshete coming alive through the speakers. The love my father had for Alemayehu was definitely transferred onto me from an early age.
Fast forward to January 2007. I was fortunate enough to travel to Addis Ababa and meet Francis Falceto, the editor of the Ethiopiques series. Though we had communicated via phone and email, this was our first face-to-face meeting. We met at the last day of the Sixth Annual Ethiopian Music Festival. As it was quite hectic we chatted only for a short while and decided to meet a few days later. Continue reading ‘Ethiopiques 22′
Published by Ethio Jazz October 12th, 2007 in Music, Noteworthy and Podcast.
“All passengers aboard!!!”
Huh? That’s an odd blare to hear while sitting on a park bench. Yes, a park bench. I had convinced myself to go have a picnic with me – without the cliché basket and cloth that is. We didn’t even take any food. Just me, myself and the $3.29 notebook that came with its own tiny pen, we went and sat at Myers Park on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
As I walked down the stairs in St Kevin’s Arcade on my way to the park, I came across a middle aged lady who looked like she had been running up and down those stairs for the last hour. She was sweating like a fat man in a summer marathon. Oh step out of your PC self-righteous shadow now, will you?! When a man is fat, call him fat. If he has a problem with accepting the way he is, then he is a dolt who probably needs to lose weight but is too lazy to do so. That lady in sweats was probably once fat, until she made all her extra lipids piss through her skin, her thick skin. Fat men should learn from her.
Anyways, she came to the park after I sat down. I offered her my forced smile as she walked past me staring like she had just seen a striping nun. I was dressed ‘normal’ with my sweatpants, a T-shirt that said “Good Girls Do Bad Things” and an old scarf that said “I LOVE ETHIOPIA” wrapped around my neck. I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. I’m not fat, or anorexic for that matter. Continue reading ‘an arousal of my pens’
Published by Doro Mata October 10th, 2007 in Personal and Social.
The duck flew. Funny story. This article brought drama.
Published by Doro Mata October 7th, 2007 in Personal and Social.
Hand drawn signs are very popular, as they should be because printing large scale billboards in color is somewhat inaccessible, especially in rural regions within Ethiopia.
Welcome signs are really popular. Here, I picked a few that give the impression of being worthy of note because of their Yetashe look Vis à Vie… Continue reading ‘Signs of Ethiopia’
Published by Nolawi October 4th, 2007 in Design and History.
On lazy Monday evenings when there’s really nothing interesting enough to watch on my meagre twenty-eight TV channels, I watch ABC’s reality show ‘Wife Swap.’ I find amusing the ridiculousness of polar opposites butting heads as they try to impose their personal beliefs onto another family.
This hour long reality show follows two American families as each woman becomes a wife and mother to another family that differs from her own in some extreme ways.
Atheists are matched with devout Christians; urbanites with farmers; control freaks and conservatives with liberal junkies. The extent to which extreme opposites who are set in their beliefs are sought after and paired is hilarious and is the mitmita in a recipe for katelo.
However, at the end of such an adventure, it is assumed that the couples will have a newfound appreciation for members of their own family as well as the valuable lessons to be learned from an interaction with the opposite world. Continue reading ‘Raising a Gender’
Published by Masinko Melody October 2nd, 2007 in Current Issues and Social.
