MY ABYssinia

09/12/2019

Happy New Year 2012

10/20/2012

08/22/2012

The death of Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi has left a dangerous power vacuum in the Horn of Africa nation, Abraham Verghese tells host Marco Werman. Verghese, author of the novel Cutting for Stone went to medical school with the former Ethiopian prime minister, and describes Zenawi's evolution from ...

02/19/2012

" TIZITA"

Getachew Kassa's slow version of "Tizita" a bright but haunting, sober lament on a backdrop of minor- chord arpeggios, is the best known. He has another version, with a fast Latin rhythm. Mahmoud Ahmed, Aster Awoke, Teddy Afro ... every Ethiopian artist records a "Tizita" They record it in Addis Ababa, but also in exile in Khartoum (yes, Khartoum! which proves that even hell has a recording studio) and of course in Rome, Washington. D.C., Atlanta, Dallas, Boston, and New York. "Tizita" is the heart's anthem, the lament of the diaspora, reverberating up and down Eighteenth Street in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, D.C., Where it pours out from Fasika's, Addis Ababa, Meskerem, Red Sea, and other ethiopian eateries, drowning out the salsa or the ragas emanating from El RIncon and Queen of India.

There is a fast " Tizita" a slow " Tizita," ( which the Ashantis made so popular), a short and a long "Tizita" ... there are as many versions as there are recording artists.

That first line ... I hear it now.

Tizitash zeweter wode ene eye metah.
I can't help thinking about you.

From Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese page 241