Interview with Professor Shelemay, by Seble Argaw

Fall 2007

 

Professor Kay Kaufman Shelemay

Professor Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Professor of Music and African American Studies at Harvard University. She also works closely with Ethiopian musicians, I thought it would be worthwhile to interview her about her interest in Ethiopian Music and her recent trip to Washington D.C. 

Seble:   Professor Shelemay, we understand that you recently returned from Washington, D.C. where you interviewed many Ethiopian singers.

 

Shelemay: Yes, I was in Washington from late July until mid-September. As you know, I've been researching and writing about  Ethiopian music throughout my career. For the last couple of years I've been doing research about the musical lives o Ethiopians in the United States and beginning a book about the broad range  of musical creativity in the Ethiopian American diaspora.  Dozens of Ethiopian musicians are actively performing and recording music in the U.S. today; the Washington, DC, area has an unusually large number of Ethiopian musicians, said to number 150 persons.  But in the process of doing this research, I became aware that the official American repository for the history of American and world culture, the Library of Congress, has virtually no information about recordings of Ethiopian music and musicians in its sound archives.  I decided to begin such a  collection and was fortunate to be invited by the Librarian of congress to spend time as the Chair for Modern Culture and the Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center in order to pursue this project.  I am very grateful to the Library of Congress and the John W. Kluge Center, which made it possible for me to come to Washington for an extended period and do the first round of interviews for the collection

Seble: Why did you want to interview the Ethiopian singers?

Shelemay:: In thinking about how it would be best to document Ethiopian music, which has many different styles, I decided that it would be best to start with individual musicians.  I interviewed both instrumentalists and singers, trying to speak to individuals from different musical styles and of different generations. Perhaps the one thing all the musicians shared was that they were immigrants to the United States during the last thirty years. I interviewed both men and women, active across musical worlds of zema (Ethiopian Orthodox Christian sacred music); bahalawi (cultural music); and zemenawi (modern/popular music).

In addition to interviewing each individual about their lives and musical activities both in Ethiopia and the United States, I collected copies of their cassettes, videotapes, and CDs, all of which will also be deposited  in the Library of Congress Archive. There were some wonderful moments shared with these singers in Washington, DC, for example, a marvelous evening with a number of famous Ethiopian singers at an Ethiopian restaurant in Maryland organized by the extraordinary singer Telela Kebede.

Seble: How did you become interested in Ethiopian music? 

 

Shelemay:  I became interested in Ethiopian music during my first year of graduate school at the University of Michigan when I first heard a recording.  I started reading about Ethiopia and then began to study Amharic.  I decided to do my doctoral dissertation on a subject in Ethiopian music and arrived in Ethiopia to do fieldwork in August, 1973.  I was lucky to be able to spend the fall of 1973 in Gondar, because after the revolution began I was not able to do research outside Addis Ababa.

Seble: Do you speak the language?

Shelemay: I continue to study Amharic, which I've never been able to speak as fluently as I would like  I also read Ge'ez, which I have used in my work on the prayers of both the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and  the Beta Israel.

Seble: What were the challenges you encountered during your project?

Shelemay: My recent work in Washington, DC, was a great pleasure and privilege--so many musicians gave generously of their time and their music.  I guess the greatest challenge was that for musicians who had to make time in their very busy schedules to come to the Library of Congress for an interview. I only hope that the project will be of lasting value; it should be the largest collection of oral histories about Ethiopian music anywhere in the world.

Seble: Are you planning similar projects here in the Boston area?  Why or why not?

Shelemay: I have been following Ethiopian musical life here in Boston since I moved here in 1993 and I plan to include interviews with Boston area Ethiopian musicians in the collection at the Library of Congress.  There is a great deal of travel by Ethiopian musicians among different American cities. Just last Friday andSaturday, three Washington, DC, centered Ethiopian musicians (Minale Degnew, Setegn Atanau, and Hana Shenkute) were here to perform with the Either/Orchestra from Somerville, MA, at the Somerville Theatre. Also, composer/performer Mulatu Astatke is in residence this year  with me at the Radcliffe Institute, along with historian of Ethiopian religions Steven Kaplan. We are all doing projects related to Ethiopian cultural innovation in the American diaspora.

So Boston is very much in the picture! Indeed, one of the musicians interviewed for the project in Washington, DC, Betelehem Melaku, has  recently moved to the Boston area, a very nice development for Boston!