 |
|
Editor's Note: Last year our friend Meklit Hadero travelled to Ethiopia with a group of like-minded Ethiopian-American artists. For those who don't know Meklit, she's an Ethiopian-American singer, musician, TED Senior Fellow, and the founder of the Arba Minch Collective. Here Meklit shares stories and photos from the Arba Minch Collective's last trip to Ethiopia. Meanwhile, Meklit's new initiative, the Nile Project, is a cross-cultural musical platform that will bring together hip-hop, traditional and contemporary musicians living in the Nile countries (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Egypt) to play and record music, to tour down the river and its source lakes on a boat made of recycled water bottles, and connect the people of the river to each other and to the broader world.
Meklit Hadero: In May of 2011, the Arba Minch Collective (AMC) took its second trip to Ethiopia. Founded in 2009, we are poets, photographers, filmmakers, theater artists, musicians, and emcees from the Ethiopian Diaspora living in North America. Together, we travel regularly to Ethiopia to connect with traditional and contemporary artists there. We are a new diaspora in the US and Canada, and as such, we are en route, inside the transition points, and all of our art reflects that in-betweeeness. We live in the middle place.
Our May 2011 trip had us performing all over Addis Ababa, as well as in the towns of Harrar and Gondar. All in all, we did ten shows over fourteen days. No down time. Lots of meeting with artists. Here are a few impressions of the country from our eyes to yours.
In This Photo: Welcome to Harrar.
