BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The European year 2022 was not a great moment for African in general and for Ethiopia in particular. Artistic and cultural developments on the continent were pushed to the back burner and news of conflicts took the front chair. This is always true when it comes to positive news in Africa. The global media is fixated on keeping anything positive that comes from Africa and Ethiopia in the dark.
It is true that there are conflicts and famines in Africa but there are also good things happening on the continent. Problems should not only be reported in a one-sided way; but should also be balanced with positive reporting about life, people and events that give hope to the continent.
In this sense, 2022 had some light to shine regarding African arts and culture in general although little is known inside and outside the continent about them. Africans could not defend their negative image but also could not exchange unbiased information about themselves within the continent of Africa. One big problem is the fact that the global media is dominated by the biggest Western news corporations but Africans themselves have not been able to build strong media institutions and news outlets that could reflect the true face of Africa to the world. There was however a few positive reporting that could spread out of the continent via the digital media in 2022.
A cursory glance at some digital media outlets would provide a bird’s eye view of the artistic and cultural activities that had been undertaken as far as Ethiopia was concerned. According to Ethiopian Monitor, website The Choke Mountain Eco village was named among World Tourism organization’s best village in 2022. The website went on to report that, the WTO has honored the Choke Mountains Eco-village by naming it among the best tourism villages of 2022 because of the particular ecology, flora and fauna of the mountainous area around Choke. The mountains are some of the places in Ethiopia that are famous for their cold climate but they are also famed for their ecology. The Choke Mountains were not chosen only for their cold climate but also for the diversity of their ecological profile including the animals and plants that are unique to the areas.
Addis Ababa was particularly vibrant in 2022 as far as cultural activities were concerned. The budding Ethiopian capital is also known for its cultural and historical relics and its old buildings dating back to more than one hundred years. However, Addis is becoming a fast growing tourism attraction for the new features it has added in 2022 like the opening of new parks, libraries and structures that were added last year. The city is also the hub of night life and music shows as well as book publishing.
Alliance Ethio-Francaise is one of the many cultural centers that attract the youth and adults from various parts of the city because it is not only providing lessons in French language but also for its tradition of organizing many shows and discussion forums as well as hosting exhibitions and providing a big library that is meeting the needs of local readers for more than a century. It was however last year that the Alliance, as it is popularly known, has launched the first book fair for young readers and hosted other cultural festivities, according an online news report.
At the continental level, Afreximbank, one of the emerging investment banks in Africa announced that it “has set aside a funding package of US $1 billion to support Africa’s creative industries under the auspices of the CANEX program” according to another report. In November 2022, Addis Standard online reported about young people being engaged in cultural activities outside Addis Ababa. An example was a report or an interview with two young people from Borana and Oromia respectfully, who are trying to develop cultural or traditional music in the case of Addisalem Tibebe, a.ka.Kuul Suree, who was born and grew up in the Borana zone of Oromia region where he attended schools and is now engaged in his words, “To bring to the world Boranan’s cultural music in a modern way.”
This is quite an ambitious project that has already been tried by many aspiring musicians in other regions. The southern region of Ethiopia has for instance produced many of the best and most successful musicians who, like sure, had the vision of modernizing southern music by giving it an international or modern touch so that their works could find audience outside their region. The other artistic aspirant is Sufan Urga, a young writer from the same region who is writing books in order to highlight the lives and works of what she calls Oromo legends who have contributed to the struggle of the Oromo people.
Many books were published across the country in 2022 although what we consider to be classics are far from appearing in the literary horizon. Ethiopian authors continued to write about their history and expediencies in various ways which is not a bad thing in itself. However when it comes to writing history books there was a tendency to do so from the subjective and politicized point of view regarding current history in the making. This approach has been criticized in the past of resulting in some biases and lack of objectivity or impartiality.
There are many writers in various genres in Ethiopia but a major hurdle along the way of literary development has always been the rising cost of printing which has gone simply beyond what is reasonable or fair. Until the turn of the new century, book publishing in Ethiopia had seen its most flourishing period but the last many years have witnessed a decline in the number of publishing houses while self-published authors too have gone out of business because they could not foot the bills.
The year 2022 has also ended with a kind “light at the end of the tunnel” for the publishing industry when it was announced that Ethiopians are going to produce pulp which is a major raw material for producing print paper in the country. If this comes true it may be considered a major breakthrough for the industry and for writers that incurred high costs because of the high cost of pulp and other components in the global industry.
The European year that has just gone into memory was also remarkable for the bad news it brought when musicians Ali Birra and Madingo Afewerk, two of the best of their respective generations passed away, leaving behind a rich legacy of music and entertainment. Madingo left his fans when he was just at the prime of his music life while Ali Birra’s life was long, legendary and full of rich moments as the multilingual singer had been entertaining his fans that came from different generations. He has left behind the freshness and originality of his music that will surely become great inspirations to coming young generations.
These musicians and entertainers did not graduate from higher educational institutions for music or entertainment but developed their talents to reach the highest pinnacles. In fact this is not a new phenomenon in Ethiopian cultural or artistic history. Ancient Ethiopian artists, scholars and educated clerics had discovered many things through hard work even modern educated elites cannot imagine without going through formal educational channels from the lowest to the highest echelons. On the other hand many educated people who have multiple degrees in multiple academic disciplines have hardly lived to the nation’s developmental or modernizing expectations.
The new European year 2023 is bound to be a better year now that peace is in the process of being established in the conflict area so the country and the nation is going to breathe a sigh of relief. People’s hope for a more peaceful and stable year is being expressed in many ways and the hope for another national revival might be in the pipelines. Peace is an indispensable part of the condition for greater creativity and entertainment. Such an environment will no doubt create conditions for greater inspiration, production and entertainment thereby setting the entire industry on a growth trajectory. It would not therefore be too much to wish our readers a fantastic 2023 in arts and culture.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2023
