#guebrou

Music from Africa Part 2: Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou

I'm continuing my series about music from Africa with the story of a 93-year-old Ethiopian composer-pianist-nun who’s fluent in seven languages and writes jazz pieces that combine her classical training with the ancient modal chants of the Orthodox Church. Her name is Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.

She was born in Ethiopia in 1923, the daughter of a privileged family that could afford a European education for their children. She was sent to a Swiss boarding school, where she took piano and violin lessons. When she returned to Addis Ababa in the 1930s, she started shattering glass ceilings: first woman to work for the Ethiopian civil service, first woman to sing in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, first woman to work as a translator for the Orthodox Patriarch in Jerusalem.

War and politics disrupted Guèbrou's life twice: she had to flee to Egypt when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia during World War II; and she left her homeland again for Israel when her beliefs brought her in conflict with the communist military junta led by Mengistu Haile Mariam. Today she continues to work at the Ethiopian Monastery in Jerusalem.

Guèbrou's work is based on her native Ethiopian music, which uses a pentatonic scale. Here she is, playing The Song of the Sea.

Today in Tokyo (who lives in Tokyo but was born in South Africa)