Remembering Dr. Tilahun Gessese, the King
of Ethiopian Music
9 January, 2010 | Teodros Kiros (PhD)
Laughter. Dance and more dance. Pride and tradition, modernity and Classism.
These were the languages of the Ethiopian youth and some of their parents on
this cold winter night as they jubilantly flooded the dance floor.
dominated this winter night in the city of Watertown, Ma, on December 9, 2006.
The King of music was hidden somewhere in the background. The crowd which
knew his lurking presence was anxious with apprehension, for it knew that the
handsome man from the land of AtumRa, the Egyptian transcendent, about whom
the late King of Ethiopian poetry, Mr. Tsegaye Gebremedhin wrote, was lurking in
the background -living music, quietly singing its verses, endlessly perfecting the
performance for the historic night and drinking from the endless well of wisdom
and love The crowd too wanted to quench its thirst by drinking from the King’s
music, the King’s passion.
He was there in the back, but no where to be seen. The music roared on, and
youth danced with hips swinging, shoulders vibrating and legs moving gracefully
and carrying the anxious bodies of hundreds of Ethiopians patiently waiting for the
appearance of the King himself.
The Doctor of Music held on and kept the crowd waiting. Dance. More dance.
Shouts and more shouts. The music roared on and the Saxophone was going out of
control. Finally, a man, larger than life, firmly planted on a wheel chair makes his
way to the center of the stage, and the seated audience of Ethiopian celebrities
leave their seats, rise and walk to the ends of the stage and salute and pay
their tribute to Dr. Telahun Gessee, the Ethiopian genius, the man who has no
match, and whose feet will never be filled by another singer shoes.
He is Ethiopian music at the height of its perfection, and the depth of its
living wisdom. With him music is philosophy and philosophy itself attains the
musicality that the ancients have yearned. In his hands music becomes a therapy
for those whose hearts have been broken by love, for all those who know the
dangers of love and still dare to taste its bitter/ sweet pills.
To them he came to sing this night on a wheel chair reserved for all those
geniuses that God has chosen for one of his hidden missions toward the last
part of their living lives. The king of music was chosen for a mission and he
carried it with a biting courage and embodied it on an extraordinary
intelligence of the human heart. Medium height, chiseled nose, a long face and an
arresting complexion, the doctor /artist sat on and sung to eternity.
Love, death, sorrow, purpose, silence, solitude, and the joy that kills were the
themes of his heartbreaking songs. He grabbed the microphone so close to his
soul and projected that voice, which refuses to die in the air, until the
listener is driven to tears and the heart is threatened with the possibility of
death. His music is fated to bring the audience to the brink of joy, the joy
that could kill, and the fulfillment that makes you move towards God.
His music is spiritual and carnal, therapeutic and transcdental, which takes you
behind the veil of appearance to the depth of the hidden reality. Yes he sung
tirelessly as he has for the last five centuries as the King of Ethiopian
music.
The night was over and the reluctant crowd parted with respect and gratefulness
to the transcendent for implanting this man in the Ethiopian soil, and now as
he moves towards death, he is crowned with the mission to serve, to do the
Lord’s work, and so I was lucky to breakfast with him at the Red Sea, Boston’s
premier Ethiopian restaurant, shortly before he left.
When we met there on a sunny Sunday, he mused for over an hour and half about
music and its vocation. His mission now is to open a clinic for the victims of
Diabetes, the very disease, which confined him to a wheel chair, from where, a
night before, he sung with arresting brilliance, candor, and purposefulness, of
a young man, born to sing with the vigor of agelessness.
Participating in a long debate about the role of the artist in the age of
“mechanical reproduction,” he argued compellingly that for him, “the artist is
a harbinger of change, a moral mediator of human values, and that his long
dream had been to fight for the brick layers, the Gold and silver smiths, and
the lowly paid soldiers and maids who break their back to make a living, and
are then stereotyped by the rich and powerful as unfit and unqualified to marry
whom ever they love, by being cast away as the untouchable”
He continued, “I have attempted to play a part in restoring their dignities, and
now their children are in visible political spaces running administrative
centers of power, all the way from the palace to the modern bureaucracies”. His
classic song “Kememot Aldenem” does indeed herald their names and sing their
praises, and they in turn gave him the tragic thematics of his songs, delivered
with inimitable voice, clear and deep- for the last fifty three years.
For he had began singing at the tender of age eleven, and had not stopped since.
He remembered those early years fondly. He praised all those artists of the
past, from Germany to the USA, who used art to be the mediator of meaning
without loosing its autonomy and serving the whims of power holders; he praised
even more all those Ethiopian artists of the past who fought for the poor by
making them present in our consciences and our lives.
For him, “ Art is both free and restrained, it is free to create out of the
imagination by constructing its own laws of beauty and standards of excellence,
and restrained by the commitment to the public, its joys and pains and its
dreams and frustrations” He has used art as autonomous and engaged, private and
public. What pleased him most was the presence of the young who came to see
him, to touch him and on whom he attempted to pass on his unfulfilled mission of
fighting for the afflicted, the poor, the overburdened, the alienated and all those
who are languishing inside the gates of poverty.
At one weak moment he cried and said, “Inspite of the limited numbers of those
who came, I am lucky that I have seventy five million Ethiopians backing me in
my endeavor to do the Lord’s work, which is service to Ethiopian humanity,
service to art and the artist as a social agent, as a purposeful mediator of
truth and justice in the right way and at the right time. Ethiopians are my
social capital, the source and foundations of my music. How much I long to open
a school on the human voice, so that the tradition of classical Ethiopian music
could be passed on across generations” The King was moved by the hundreds of
youth who stretched their longing hands to touch the genius’ soul by feeling his
tender and loving hands. They stood by him adoringly, they took pictures of him
for remembrance of things past. Some cried. Some froze with hypnotized stares,
and many danced to death.
He remembered them all with eyes filled with unshed tears, he remembered them
because they vindicated him, because they know first hand the power of Eros,
the urge to create by always being behind the limits of experience, where art
meets danger, and where life risks death, for the sake of creating and
following the silent laws of beauty, of tragedy and death itself.
Towards the end, Mr. Bekele and Ms. Misrak, the generous owners of the Red Sea
Restaurant, and Mr. Tadesse, the distinguished owner of Quality@Your Service, a
very close friend of the Artist/ Doctor, and I, pushed the wheelchair on which
sat the King of Ethiopian music up from the basement floor, and thus left the
voice of love, of hope and of faith.
of Ethiopian Music
9 January, 2010 | Teodros Kiros (PhD)
Laughter. Dance and more dance. Pride and tradition, modernity and Classism.
These were the languages of the Ethiopian youth and some of their parents on
this cold winter night as they jubilantly flooded the dance floor.
- The dance floor at a huge hall
readied to accommodate over a
thousand people bursting with
the exuberance of youth, the fire
of joy, the swings and twists of
modern Ethiopian dance
responding to the groveling
multicultural band of a
dominated this winter night in the city of Watertown, Ma, on December 9, 2006.
The King of music was hidden somewhere in the background. The crowd which
knew his lurking presence was anxious with apprehension, for it knew that the
handsome man from the land of AtumRa, the Egyptian transcendent, about whom
the late King of Ethiopian poetry, Mr. Tsegaye Gebremedhin wrote, was lurking in
the background -living music, quietly singing its verses, endlessly perfecting the
performance for the historic night and drinking from the endless well of wisdom
and love The crowd too wanted to quench its thirst by drinking from the King’s
music, the King’s passion.
He was there in the back, but no where to be seen. The music roared on, and
youth danced with hips swinging, shoulders vibrating and legs moving gracefully
and carrying the anxious bodies of hundreds of Ethiopians patiently waiting for the
appearance of the King himself.
The Doctor of Music held on and kept the crowd waiting. Dance. More dance.
Shouts and more shouts. The music roared on and the Saxophone was going out of
control. Finally, a man, larger than life, firmly planted on a wheel chair makes his
way to the center of the stage, and the seated audience of Ethiopian celebrities
leave their seats, rise and walk to the ends of the stage and salute and pay
their tribute to Dr. Telahun Gessee, the Ethiopian genius, the man who has no
match, and whose feet will never be filled by another singer shoes.
He is Ethiopian music at the height of its perfection, and the depth of its
living wisdom. With him music is philosophy and philosophy itself attains the
musicality that the ancients have yearned. In his hands music becomes a therapy
for those whose hearts have been broken by love, for all those who know the
dangers of love and still dare to taste its bitter/ sweet pills.
To them he came to sing this night on a wheel chair reserved for all those
geniuses that God has chosen for one of his hidden missions toward the last
part of their living lives. The king of music was chosen for a mission and he
carried it with a biting courage and embodied it on an extraordinary
intelligence of the human heart. Medium height, chiseled nose, a long face and an
arresting complexion, the doctor /artist sat on and sung to eternity.
Love, death, sorrow, purpose, silence, solitude, and the joy that kills were the
themes of his heartbreaking songs. He grabbed the microphone so close to his
soul and projected that voice, which refuses to die in the air, until the
listener is driven to tears and the heart is threatened with the possibility of
death. His music is fated to bring the audience to the brink of joy, the joy
that could kill, and the fulfillment that makes you move towards God.
His music is spiritual and carnal, therapeutic and transcdental, which takes you
behind the veil of appearance to the depth of the hidden reality. Yes he sung
tirelessly as he has for the last five centuries as the King of Ethiopian
music.
The night was over and the reluctant crowd parted with respect and gratefulness
to the transcendent for implanting this man in the Ethiopian soil, and now as
he moves towards death, he is crowned with the mission to serve, to do the
Lord’s work, and so I was lucky to breakfast with him at the Red Sea, Boston’s
premier Ethiopian restaurant, shortly before he left.
When we met there on a sunny Sunday, he mused for over an hour and half about
music and its vocation. His mission now is to open a clinic for the victims of
Diabetes, the very disease, which confined him to a wheel chair, from where, a
night before, he sung with arresting brilliance, candor, and purposefulness, of
a young man, born to sing with the vigor of agelessness.
Participating in a long debate about the role of the artist in the age of
“mechanical reproduction,” he argued compellingly that for him, “the artist is
a harbinger of change, a moral mediator of human values, and that his long
dream had been to fight for the brick layers, the Gold and silver smiths, and
the lowly paid soldiers and maids who break their back to make a living, and
are then stereotyped by the rich and powerful as unfit and unqualified to marry
whom ever they love, by being cast away as the untouchable”
He continued, “I have attempted to play a part in restoring their dignities, and
now their children are in visible political spaces running administrative
centers of power, all the way from the palace to the modern bureaucracies”. His
classic song “Kememot Aldenem” does indeed herald their names and sing their
praises, and they in turn gave him the tragic thematics of his songs, delivered
with inimitable voice, clear and deep- for the last fifty three years.
For he had began singing at the tender of age eleven, and had not stopped since.
He remembered those early years fondly. He praised all those artists of the
past, from Germany to the USA, who used art to be the mediator of meaning
without loosing its autonomy and serving the whims of power holders; he praised
even more all those Ethiopian artists of the past who fought for the poor by
making them present in our consciences and our lives.
For him, “ Art is both free and restrained, it is free to create out of the
imagination by constructing its own laws of beauty and standards of excellence,
and restrained by the commitment to the public, its joys and pains and its
dreams and frustrations” He has used art as autonomous and engaged, private and
public. What pleased him most was the presence of the young who came to see
him, to touch him and on whom he attempted to pass on his unfulfilled mission of
fighting for the afflicted, the poor, the overburdened, the alienated and all those
who are languishing inside the gates of poverty.
At one weak moment he cried and said, “Inspite of the limited numbers of those
who came, I am lucky that I have seventy five million Ethiopians backing me in
my endeavor to do the Lord’s work, which is service to Ethiopian humanity,
service to art and the artist as a social agent, as a purposeful mediator of
truth and justice in the right way and at the right time. Ethiopians are my
social capital, the source and foundations of my music. How much I long to open
a school on the human voice, so that the tradition of classical Ethiopian music
could be passed on across generations” The King was moved by the hundreds of
youth who stretched their longing hands to touch the genius’ soul by feeling his
tender and loving hands. They stood by him adoringly, they took pictures of him
for remembrance of things past. Some cried. Some froze with hypnotized stares,
and many danced to death.
He remembered them all with eyes filled with unshed tears, he remembered them
because they vindicated him, because they know first hand the power of Eros,
the urge to create by always being behind the limits of experience, where art
meets danger, and where life risks death, for the sake of creating and
following the silent laws of beauty, of tragedy and death itself.
Towards the end, Mr. Bekele and Ms. Misrak, the generous owners of the Red Sea
Restaurant, and Mr. Tadesse, the distinguished owner of Quality@Your Service, a
very close friend of the Artist/ Doctor, and I, pushed the wheelchair on which
sat the King of Ethiopian music up from the basement floor, and thus left the
voice of love, of hope and of faith.
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