ayzoshyenelij

[ayzoshyenelij]

“black music reaches the deepest expression of memory” // some thoughts and feelings

For most of my life growing up, I haven’t felt like I was part of an Ethiopian community. Pretty much all of my friends in high school were black, and I was surrounded by Ethiopian people at family events and school and the city I lived in (the DMV area has the highest population of habesha immigrants in the US). Of course, being black and being Ethiopian are not synonymous (certainly not to my Ethiopian immigrant family members, at least). This then raised a weird question of whether or not I would assimilate into a (black american) culture that was still mine to claim, if I wanted to. A lot of Ethiopian immigrants, however, choose instead to believe that they’re too good to be black, too different, that they have no relationship to or stake in the Capital-B Black community in the United States. We are African, we are Ethiopian, but we are not black.

[ayzoshyenelij]

Not Black.

Not Black.

Not Black.

[ayzoshyenelij]

Black people are lazy; we are hardworking. Black people are descendants of slaves; we were never colonized. Black people are violent; we are peaceful. Black people are stupid; we go to college. We are doctors and engineers and everything else that they are not. Never mind that whiteness doesn’t care how many generations removed you are from the continent, Ethiopian does not mean black, is not black.

[ayzoshyenelij]

Not Black.

Not Black.

Not Black.

[ayzoshyenelij]

This tension has always been present in my life. I don’t speak Amharic (though I can understand most of it), eat traditional Ethiopian foods (I don’t like injera, sorry), go to church (but I still believe in a god of some sort!), or participate in many other meaningful cultural practices. There were always plenty of Ethiopian people in my schools and the various churches my mom would force us to attend, and I never wanted to be like them. Strangers and family members alike who would comment on my weight and my acne and how shameful it is that I can’t hold a conversation in what is their native tongue. People who would tell me at nine years old how pretty my younger sister was, because she had lighter skin and looser curls, and hesitantly follow it up with “of course, you are too!” People who have scolded me at habesha functions for being ferenj, telling my parents they’ve failed me and my sisters for not immersing us in our traditions, the only thing that should matter to us. My dad has definitely internalized a lot of this, lecturing us often, saying that our “refusal” to engage with our Ethiopian-ness means we are ashamed of who we are, where our parents come from, and our collective history. We are effectively rejecting everything our parents worked for and made for us.

[ayzoshyenelij]

Growing up, my parents played a lot of Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and Luther Vandross. All black american artists, all internationally famous singers. My mom, who is deeply religious (a casually orthodox Christian), also played a lot of Ethiopian gospel music, mezmur. I understood even less Amharic when it was sung in this way, slowed down and drawn out, words that I never heard on a day-to-day basis so I couldn’t place their meaning. My mom has more mezmur CDs than I can count or that she can remember, but she tends to listen to the same one for weeks at a time. She’s very attached to these CDs, defensive of them, even. Any time my sister and I would try to turn the radio on, she’d be visibly annoyed with us, saying that we “should listen to God” instead. We’d ignore her, flipping through ads and static and shitty pop music until settling on something we liked, usually one of the hip-hop and R&B stations, letting the bass fill the car as the last traces of god were shaken out.

[ayzoshyenelij]

The only other experiences I’ve had with Ethiopian music specifically were at all-habesha gatherings, like weddings, baby showers, and graduation parties. I never understood what the songs were about, but the energy in the room would always shift as the music started and the tej loosened everyone up. Soon large circles would form, and people would start singing along, le-le-le-ing, clapping, moving their hips and shoulders and necks all in unison, doing a dance known as eskesta (a dance I still cannot do).

[ayzoshyenelij]

My dad was right that I really didn’t care about being Ethiopian. Why would it matter, anyways, to feel connected to people who have made it so clear that the way I am is not good enough, not “authentic” enough, to be one of them? My body, my being, is always something to comment on. Other people’s families always the subject of gossip, keeping up appearances always more important than actually healthy and stable relationships. Homes where women do all the work and it’s never appreciated, never finished. I grew up always being expected to get water and food and anything else the men in my family wanted; they would sit back while my mom and aunties cooked and set the table and made coffee and watched the kids and washed dishes and checked in on everyone making sure they were okay. I grew to resent a lot of people I knew because of this.

It wasn’t until quite recently that I’ve started to have a change of heart. After all, carrying around this bitterness wasn’t healthy for me, nor was it something I tried to unpack. Of course I knew misogyny and homophobia are linked to legacies of colonialism and imperialism and orthodox religious practices, among a host of other things, but that didn’t make it any easier for me to try to connect to my culture in some way. So, I started to easiest way I knew how, through music, during a period when I really missed my mom and sought something that would remind me of her. I thought back to all of her mezmur CDs and knew how comforting it would be to listen to music in Amharic again, music I still didn’t understand but finally wanted to.

[ayzoshyenelij]

“black music is ‘psychic energy’” // theory on music and community formation // specifically in the black/ethiopian diaspora, specifically in my diaspora [me, i’m the diaspora]

There aren’t too many people writing academically about Ethiopian music, at least in English anyways. One of the leading scholars is an old white lady ethnomusicologist named Kay Kaufman Shelemay, who is actually a professor at Harvard in their African & African-American Studies department (surprise!). I’ll save you the trouble of reading her long piece and summarize it, saying what most of us already know to be true: music helps form community and bring people together, and the diasporic context is no different. She talks about a continuum of three different musical communities that are ever changing:

Descent >>>>>><<<<<< Dissent >>>>>><<<<<< Affinity

Descent - communities formed based on commonalities

Dissent - communities formed based in opposition to something

Affinity - communities formed based on individual preferences

I know from my experience with Ethiopian people that these lines are often blurred, but when a good song comes on at a function, everyone's dancing and at least pretending like they do like their husband or rude niece or whoever else they secretly hate. Music is something that binds us so tightly to one another, whether it be church songs, or protest music, or songs about love.

Certainly, the ability music has to form communities and build bridges cannot be underestimated, especially given that it is something you can just feel, something everyone can feel together. But also, I don’t want to give this lady too much shine.

[ayzoshyenelij]

“when I use the term jazz, I speak of all black music” // a very brief history of ethiopian jazz

The origins of Ethio-jazz can be traced very clearly back to Mulatu Astatke. He studied music at Trinity College in London and Berklee College in Boston before moving to New York to learn more about jazz and Latin music. He returned to Ethiopia ready to combine what he learned with traditional Ethiopian instruments and pentatonic modes, something that had quite literally never been done before. He was an innovator, though his work was not appreciated for a while in Ethiopia because of the allegiance to traditional music. Still, many other Ethiopian musicians flocked to the newly formed genre, fueling even more innovation and creativity that soon made ethio-jazz critically acclaimed all over the world, elevating a super black genre of music for global recognition yet again.

[ayzoshyenelij]

“as black people go, so does black music” // my connection to ethiopian jazz and identity formation

I started seriously listening to Ethiopian jazz several months ago. It’s an accessible form of Ethiopian music for me - there are no words, so I feel no self-imposed shame for not understanding what exactly they’re singing about. I always saw a connection between being a black person growing up in the United States and being African, or more specifically, Ethiopian. I wanted to look to the continent for a different way of understanding blackness and my own self and body.

The first ethio-jazz song that ever made me cry was Ené Alantchi Alnorem (I Can't Live Without You) by Girma Hadgu. The first instrument I ever played that made me cry was my friend Olani’s krar that she had custom made for her in Ethiopia. She told me it was supposed to do that, that it’s actually known as the healing harp.

[ayzoshyenelij]

being black is important to me // being ethiopian is important to me

I think about my identity a lot in political terms, as it wouldn’t really matter outside larger systems of power ascribing meaning to my body without my permission.

Q:Why does being black matter?

A: Because white supremacy exists and is actively killing people who look like me

Q: Why does being queer matter?

A: Because compulsory heterosexuality has a tight grip on my existence and I wish it didn’t

Q: Why does being Ethiopian matter?

A: Because that’s where my blood comes from, that’s where my ancestors are from, no matter whether or not I can speak the language or do certain dances, this is still where I draw my power from.

The same could be said of any of my general queer and black ancestors as well, but I haven’t felt the same way about being Ethiopian before. I don’t know what really caused this shift, maybe it was my homesickness, maybe some great existential longing, probably my need to make meaning out of a body [my body] that has only ever been written over.