National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

One of our favorite new releases of 2010 so far is On a Day Like This (Porto Franco Records), a winsome little indie charmer from San Francisco-based singer/songwriter Meklit Hadero.

Hadero's airy, sweet-and-sourdough vocals and viscerally poetic lyrics have garnered her comparisons to everyone from Joni Mitchell to Nina Simone. Yet Hadero's experience as a first-generation immigrant from Ethiopia informs her music, making her sound and sensibility entirely her own.

We caught up with Hadero recently, while she was preparing for her current East Coast tour and she told us all about herself and her music, including her musical apprenticeship at San Francisco's Red Poppy Art House, her experiences as an Ethiopian artist living in America, and her recent TED Global fellowship.

Nat Geo Music: So tell me a little bit about yourself - you were born in Ethiopia, right? How old were you when you emigrated and what impact did that have on you?

Meklit Hadeo: That's right. I was born in Addis Ababa, but left when I was only a year and a half old. My family went to Germany first, then came to the U.S. We lived all over - D.C., Iowa, Brooklyn, Connecticut... Leaving your home country is a really dramatic experience. But my parents always taught us that you have to embrace the opportunity and take advantage of everything this country has to offer.

How did you get into making music?

I didn't actually start performing and writing music until I was an adult. I always knew that I wanted to sing, but I had to overcome that immigrant mindset where you internalize the drive to become a doctor or a professional or an academic and treat the arts as a hobby. My parents are both physicians, so there was a lot of encouragement to pursue the sciences when I was growing up - I still love science today and I definitely got that from my parents.

What do your parents think of your music career?

Oh, my mom is my biggest supporter. They definitely came around once they saw I wasn't starving to death! I think that, like most immigrant communities in the U.S., Ethiopians place a lot of weight on education. Learning was definitely my focus growing up. But after I finished my degree in Political Science, I came to live in San Francisco in 2004, and that's where I really began to get involved in the arts.

The Bay area has a large Ethiopian community, is that what drew you there?

Not really. Most of the Ethiopian community in the Bay Area is in the East Bay, Oakland and a small contingent in the Filmore district. But the Mission District became my creative home, and I sort of situate myself more in an international group of folks, people from all over.

That was with the Red Poppy Art House, right? Can you tell me a little bit about your involvement with that and what it meant to you as an artist?

Right... Well, in San Francisco, the Mission District is a real creative crossroads for people from all over the world, and the Red Poppy Art House is kind of the hub of the artistic community there.

I literally stumbled across The Red Poppy one day and really fell in love with what they were doing. I started volunteering and running shows, meeting musicians from all over the world. I ended up as the director there for two years, and it gave me an intimate connection to the arts community and ecology of the whole city.

Is that where you first started singing?

Actually, I first started singing at a place called the Blue Bear School in San Francisco. I won a scholarship there and got to learn all the basics of making music - which is something most people learn when they're much younger. I was 25 at the time and my scholarship was for people ranging in age from 12 - 25. I looked like the lead singer for a children's band! [laughs]

But I did start performing later at The Red Poppy. It was a really nurturing environment and just kind of encouraged me to grow into the artist I always wanted to be. I started singing just by myself, totally a cappella - which I don't know if I would be brave enough to do again now! [laughs]

Then in 2007 we got a grant from the city, and we used the money to form Nefasha Ayer - which is a musical collective put together by my great friend Todd Brown, who founded the Red Poppy - and I began singing with them in a more disciplined way.

Tell me a little about Nefasha Ayer?

Nefasha Ayer was kind of this loose collective of Bay Area musicians and poets that we liked to work with, who came from very different ethnic and musical backgrounds. The name is Amharic and means "The wind that travels". For me, it was such a learning experience, to play with these really amazing and encouraging musicians, who had enough trust in me to let me sing and write new material. As a collective, it was all about exploring hybridity and bringing together different musical cultures and finding a common musical language. And I want that multiplicity to be at the basis for my understanding of everything.

Did you first start writing songs with Nefahsa? What is your process like?

I had already been writing songs, but I started writing parts for big arrangements with Nefasha, and working with a bigger band made me grow as a singer and a songwriter. I learned more about arranging and working with more than just my own voice and guitar.

I don't know how to describe my [songwriting] process, exactly. It's a particular mental space: things widen. When you're there everything inspires you and the connections between metaphors just float up to the surface.

Your new record has a lot of jazz influences, was jazz a big part of your musical education with Nefasha Ayer?

Oh definitely - Jazz is a huge influence. It was a real touchstone for everyone in Nefasha, that ethos of improvisation was at the core of what we were doing, and it's still at the core of what I do know, and how I think about music.

Would you call yourself a jazz artist? How would you describe your sound?

I don't think I would be comfortable calling myself a jazz artist. I'm an improviser, and a jazz fan, but I don't know if jazz is really what I do... There's also a lot of R&B in my music, too. I guess I would describe it as a coming together of jazz, American songwriting and Ethiopian style.

What did you listen to growing up?

Well it was always kind of a back and forth with my parents with the radio in the car. My parents would want to listen to Ethiopian music - Aster Aweke and Mahmoud Ahmed - and my sister and I wanted to listen to pop. I was crazy about Michael Jackson - I knew all of Thriller by age 4! He was my first love! [laughs]

How does Ethiopian music influence you today?

Well the Ethiopian vocal style is just so wild! I cover a song on my album called "Abbay Mado", which means "Crossing The Blue Nile". It was a traditional song that was made really famous by Mahmoud Ahmed. I think that covers really choose you, and I was just possessed by that song. It's about a farmer calling to his Ox across the Blue Nile, and my father's family are farmers back in Ethiopia, so this song really spoke to me.

And I'm learning an Ethiopian song right now called "Kema Kam, which means "I Like Your Afro". When I heard it the first time I just died! [laughs].

How much do you sing and write in Amharic?

I don't actually speak Amharic, but I'm trying to do more and more in the language. When I sing, my Amharic isn't perfect. I still make plenty of pronunciation mistakes, but I decided to do it anyway. Ethiopians always take aside to tell me they'll help me with my pronunciation!

What's the response been like from the Ethiopian community?

I've been very moved by the support of the Ethiopian community here. They're really proud to see young people playing Ethiopian music - even though that's not all that I do. It's so sweet when they come out and support me and I always melt a little bit.

What's it like playing for an Ethiopian audience as opposed to your usual audience? Is it intimidating?

Well the main difference is that Ethiopian audiences aren't shy about making requests! That used to really annoy me. [laughs] I need to get better at handling that. I do understand where that's coming from. It's a really beautiful sentiment and I want to honor it. I'd like to continue to be a student of Ethiopian music and add more to my repertoire. But you can't just cover any song like a jukebox - the song has to speak to you.

Is that what happened with your cover of Nina Simone's "Feeling Good"?

I loved that song for a long time, and sang it to myself a lot. It was one of the first I started singing live, too. I started out a cappella -I didn't realize how brave that was. I would never do that now! [laughs] But I like to think that it's what Nina would have done. She had that kind of bravery.

Switching gears a little bit? can you tell me how you came to be a TED fellow?

I just applied for it and they invited me to Oxford as a TED Global Fellow. It was really that simple! [laughs] It was a remarkable experience - really eye-opening in many ways. But I was explicit that I was there as a singer first, not as an activist or an arts presenter.

Also, you're one of the founders of the Arba-Minch collective, can you tell me what that is and what it's about?

The Arba-Minch collective is a group of Ethiopian artists - poets, musicians, painters, from the disapora - all living in North America - who first got together to go to the 1,000 Stars Festival in Arba Minch, Ethiopia in 2009, which is one of the biggest music and dance events in Ethiopia. When I found out about it, I just freaked out. I was like 'I gotta go". But I couldn't just go alone. I wanted to get together a group from the diaspora, artists of different disciplines. We'd all been watching each other for years. So we started as a collective, 8 of us on this trip.

Unfortunately, the festival was cancelled. It was really crushing, but we still went [to Ethiopia] anyway. We traveled through the region where the festival would have been held in southern Ethiopia, where there's this incredible ethnic diversity. It ended up being this really powerful moment. We also performed in clubs and schools in Addis. We gave workshops at an Ethio-jazz school there that was funded by Ethiopian-Americans. It was an eye-opening trip for me, and all the members of the collective. It really helped us open up a dialogue with other artists and institutions in Ethiopia. Today folks in the collective are galvanizing artists in Ethiopia and across the disapora.

What role do artists from the diaspora have in Ethiopia today?

I see a generational shift taking place right now - both in Ethiopia and in the diaspora. There's a lot of energy coming from the diaspora, and from the younger generation who didn't grow up in isolation from the rest of the world. And I think that the arts have a lot to do with this - for instance, Ethiopian kids who grew up on American hip hop and R&B are more comfortable with other music from outside, just like kids who grew up with the internet and satellite TV are more comfortable with ideas from outside of Ethiopia. So I think the role that we artists can play is in facilitating a dialogue and translating between the two worlds. I think the diaspora is just finding its voice now, and once we do, great things will come! [laughs]