(From Azmaris to elite entertainers)
Ethiopian singer and entertainer Gigi or Ejigayehu Shibabaw has recently been elevated to the status of a legend of modern Ethiopian music with an honorary doctorate degree for her service to Ethiopian music and the positive role she played for so many years playing Ethiopian rhythms and melodies with modern musical arrangements. Her songs reflect her cultural heritage and her patriotic lyrics that often celebrate Ethiopian heroes and Ethiopian landscapes.
Gigi lived most of her artistic life in the US and is little known here at home except among the legions of her fans from the younger generation. She is perhaps the only artiste who lived and built her music career abroad at the same time that she became famous at home. Aster Aweke, the other artistic icon, started her career here in her homeland and achieved fame well before she left for the United States and grew and matured as a legend in her own right. Aster is often dubbed the “Areta Franklin of Ethiopia” for her blues styles and her melodies of love, memory, loss, and remembrance or nostalgia for her homeland.
According to available information, Ejigayehu Shibabaw, mostly known by her stage name as Gigi, is an Ethiopian singer famous both at home and abroad, a rare opportunity enjoyed by most singers in Ethiopia. Nowadays, musicians travel abroad after they become famous and want to convey their messages and music to Diaspora Ethiopians in various parts of the world. Gigi was fortunate to go to the US early in her career for at least two reasons.
She discovered the Western music scene when she was relatively young and this helped her to combine her traditional style with Western and contemporary styles. “”She performed the music of Ethiopia in combination with a wide variety of other genres, often in collaboration with her husband Bill Laswell a bassist and producer.” It was also there that she met her future husband and colleague who contributed to her growing and maturing as a musician.
According to Wikipedia, Gigi was born and raised in northwestern Ethiopia. She once admitted that she learned music or traditional songs from an Ethiopian orthodox priest in the family home. She lived in Kenya for a few years before moving to San Francisco in about 1998.” She was relatively fast in achieving success thanks in part to her husband’s assistance who produced her songs in ways that appeal both to Ethiopian and foreign listeners.
She was soon acquainted with other producers and American jazz musicians who collaborated in producing something unique that defined her as an Afro-American musician whose themes are inevitably traditional or Ethiopian while her styles evolved according to contemporary American styles. Her first album was a critical success and opened her doors for other achievements and ultimate recognition as a rare Ethiopian and African female legend.
Gigi is awarded an honorary doctorate degree for everything she has done in her relatively brief career that is replete with successes that confirmed her a fresh voice in modern Ethiopia music and a lover of her traditions and even the landscapes about which she composed so many poetic lyrics of nostalgia, loss and hope. Her award is hugely deserved to say the least. While celebrating Gigi’s triumph as an artiste, it may be appropriate to shed some light on the long history of Ethiopian music and musicians who rose from the relative darkness of the past to the light of the contemporary world.
In traditional Ethiopia of the old bygones days, artistes, handicraftsmen and all those men and women who used their brains or their hands to prove themselves were looked down at and were even the targets of social ostracism and often ridiculed as they were considered people who should be kept on the margins of society because their activities were considered worthless to society. That was the time when real human achievement was usually measured by other social metrics than artistic talent acumen or technical skills.
The musicians and singers of old times were thus the quintessential victims of social prejudice and official neglect. They were considered good only for entertaining and amusing the often untalented and gullible members of high society and rarely received recognition as useful professionals in their own rights. It took a long time for these people to gain a modicum of gratitude or appreciation until well into the 20th century when Western modernization penetrated Ethiopian society with all the values and trappings that gave high places to artists and entertainers. By the end of the last century, and the dawn of the present one, Ethiopian musicians and singers were lifted through their own personal sufferings and tremendous efforts if not their talents, from the morass of poverty and neglect and catapulted to the altars of fame and fortune.
The late Tilahun Gessesse, dubbed by the public as the ‘King of Ethiopian Music’, and other like him were the first pioneers who breached the thick wall of social and official silence that kept them in the old mould or stereotype of looking at musicians as people whose mission in life was to “bark or shout into the microphones” with their high-pitched voices that eulogized love, nostalgia, loss or mundane affairs that had no relevance to the welfare of the people and the country.
The radical shift in perception came when, after the Italian occupation and the establishment of the Hager Fikir Theatre, artists started to use their talents as tools of public mobilization against the would-be colonialists. They started to sync with the patriotic fervor of the time by conveying the message of Ethiopia’s struggle for freedom, dignity and national sovereignty. Since that time, artistes became the darlings of society and started to perform at official venues to the huge admiration of the public. Everything changed for them afterwards.
The last few decades have also witnessed the birth and blossoming of new artistic talents and new music styles. Theatre and cinema were established as indispensable aspects of national life or as part and parcel of the cultural modernization drive. That was the time when the most incredible singers and musicians emerged from the wombs of society where they were kept at bay. The old traditional singers derogatively who were long referred to as azmaris started to frequent the alehouses and public places to share their music with ordinary people were inevitably attracted to them.
Addis Ababa was of course a natural pole of attraction to the azmaris who moved from place to place or from the rural to the urban settings holding their ubiquitous krar or the string instrument who melodies accompanied the vocalists. The azmaris later on evolved as indispensable guests at weddings and secular festivals and occasions around prominent public places.
We in Africa do not have the financial and te3chnological resources to organize annual Grammy Awards for best musicians or Golden Globe Awards for iconic figures in the film industry. Yet, we have an old tradition of celebrating the achievements of the best and brightest among us in many fields of endeavors. In the old days, monarchs used to recognize the worth of artists and high achievers. They granted them plots of land, money donations or promotions in their works or upgrades in their ranks if they were from the military. Times inevitably change and some of these practices are abandoned while others are still observed. What matters in all this is not the material benefits but the high esteem in which the awardees are held.
The Haile Selassie 1st Award was the highest ever prize granted to great artistic talents. In the last many decades, another tradition had taken root, namely the act of honoring exceptional achievers by granting them material and financial rewards in recognition of their contribution to society and country. Last but not least, bestowing the highest academic title, namely honorary doctorates degrees, on high achievers every year, can be taken as the latest in this long tradition of giving credit to the best and brightest among us in many fields of engagements, from philanthropy to music and other professions. The basic idea behind all these awards is to encourage notable men and women of the year and put their contributions on the highest altars for posterity.
The modern artistes can be said more fortunate than that their older counterparts. They work and live as professional artistes, staging expensive shows and foreign tours that pay well and make most of them wealthy in the process. The modern artistes are luckier in the sense that they were born at a time when entertainment turned from a “cottage industry” into a multi-million or multi-billion dollar global business on equal footing with the movie industry. Nowadays, Ethiopian artistes have the unprecedented opportunity to break through the walls of global entertainment. Their music can be consumed in Paris, Rome, London or New York if they are competitive and original.
By comparison, the old azmaris have long become a vanishing musical species because their time was up and they could not cope up with the revolutionary changes that the music industry witnessed in the last fifty or so years. Some of them are still visible in a few elite restaurants and kitfo bets as reminders of the old times when tradition enjoyed respect and admiration, before it had become a museum piece. No doubt that there is also, among the new generation of musicians who have successfully combined the old the new music styles to produce something that is appealing to the global audience.
Modern artistes are well-paid, live well and become not only celebrities in record times but also lead a lavish lifestyle often imported or imitated from the West. They drive expensive cars and live in posh neighborhoods or buy expensive condos where they build their studios and even go as far as setting up their own recording companies and brands. Not a few of them migrate to the West or the Middle East where a large Ethiopian Diaspora with a lot of money to burn, buy their albums and attend their expensive live shows with eagerness sometimes bordering on hysteria.
Gigi’s triumph is a well-deserved one of course. She may not be the first Ethiopian female artist to be granted the honor and she will not be the last.
The significance of Gigi’s award resides in the fact that although she lived and worked abroad, her music or songs are so powerful that they earned her legions of fans from the younger as well as the older generations. Her lyr
ics and rhythms are appealing to both of them. Her triumph is also a sign that there is actually close encounter or a kind of cross-fertilization between the old and new worlds.
Gigi’s honor might also be taken as a late recognition of the contributions of traditional Ethiopian singers who lived in a different world but laid the foundations Young talents like Gigi have proved that the azmaris of bygone eras have also a share in the moral triumph of Ethiopian musicians. The honor is at the same time another proof that it does not really matter where artistes live and do their works. As long as they do something great they will inevitably be recognized in this new world which is always hungry of new talents. Gigi is indeed a towering example and a beacon of hope for many more talents that will emerge in the coming years and decades, without forgetting their roots and their journey ahead of them
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD THURSDAY 3 AUGUST 2023
