A construction site in Addis 

Following the example of the neighbouring page, you will find here randomly gathered Ethiopian topics that have impressed me in one way or another. Actually, the whole country, its peoples and cultures have marked me profoundly. But for now I will leave out such precious things as the tasty Yirgacheffe and the coffee ceremony, Lalibela, my nightmarish food poisonings in Arba Minch, hot saunas with the Oromos, Bahir Dar cow hide markets…and come back to each topic with a little less hurried approach.

 

Script   

     

The Ethiopian languages of the Semitic family are derived from Ge’ez, the language of the ancient Axumite Kingdom. I just love this script - I’ve had to create strange visual rules in my head to memorize certain letters in the learning process!

 

 

A couple of samples from my Ethiopian music library:   

   Aster Aweke: ‘Kabu’ from the album Kabu  listen 

  Mahmoud Ahmed: ‘Titesh’ from the album Soul of Addis  listen  

  Minyeshu: ‘Arhibu’ from the album Meba  listen

 

These three artists are always included in my playlist and one of my favourite pass times is to sit in a tram or train and listen to them and let the world go by… their powerful voices give me the impression that everything that I see through the window on my journey is in its right place. Call it good energy! Aweke’s and Ahmed’s and Minyeshu’s songs - just like most of the Ethiopian pop music - always make me want to create short films or video clips with streams of images that would somehow try to capture the ordinary of our lives. These songs have that strange earthly sound that I simply cannot resist.

If you like these three samples you will probably enjoy also the following artists: Netsanet Mellesse, Teddy Afro, Kuku Sebsebe, Ahmed Teshome Sofiya, Hamelmal Abate, Gigi Shibabaw

 

Icons

 

The Ethiopian hand-made and hand-carved wooden icons are simply adorable. The icon art in Ethiopia is full of rich illustrations of scenes from the Old Testament and I like especially those pocket-size icons in the form of diptyques or triptyques. And you can easily take one with you wherever you go!