Adoption Bookshelf: Ethiopia

Showing posts with label Ethiopia. Show all posts

Something Old, Something New...

The theme for today's link round-up: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

Something Old

Voting continues for CNN's Heroes contest. And I still haven't tired of plugging Yohannes Gebregeorgis and Ethiopia Reads. Keep voting for him. Why not make it a daily destination when you're catching up on blogs? After all, who wouldn't want to promote an organization making such a positive, tangible difference in the world?

"Ethiopia Reads believes that those who read bloom…and that literacy is the key to improving the lives of this generation of Ethiopians. Our mission is to build a reading culture in Ethiopia by connecting children with books. We do this by planting libraries for children, publishing books in English as well as local Ethiopian languages, and training teachers and librarians to cultivate a love of reading among children."
--from the Ethiopia Reads website

"The salvation of our country Ethiopia, we have repeatedly stated to you, lies primarily in education. As Ethiopia is one, all Ethiopians are also one and education is the only way to maintain the condition....
We believe that from truth alone is born liberty and only an educated people can consider itself as really free and master of its fate."
--Haile Selassie I,
from his first speech on education

Something New

How about a new cookbook? The Riggs Family, who's adopted children from Guatemala (Abby and Landis) and Ethiopia (Sami), are now offering a cookbook for sale.

And the proceeds go to a very worthy cause. Earlier this summer, three-year-old Abby was diagnosed with leukemia. All money raised from cookbook sales will go toward paying for her treatment (as the family describes below).

When we were adopting Abby, Landis and Sami one of the ways we raised money was by creating the adoption cookbook.

We compiled dozens of recipes from the countries and families of adopted children. Salads, appetizers, main dishes, soups, desserts... over 150 pages of great recipes.

We have several cases of the cookbooks leftover from that fundraising effort. We would like to offer them again to do some fundraising for the expenses related to Abby's leukemia. Gas, food, prescriptions, hospitals, doctors, tests... at a time when our income was unexpectedly and dramatically cut, our expenses went up.

But, we don't simply want to ask for money. We want to sell this fantastic recipe book for a price you would happily pay at a book store. The recipes are wonderful, and the pictures of the adopted kids heartwarming.

To purchase the Riggs Family cookbook, click here.

And if you can't afford it (although it's only $20, so it's a great deal!), you can still support Abby and the Riggs family by praying for them. I'm sure that's the kind of support they value above all others.

Something Borrowed

As seen at The Road To Our Own, a link to an insightful interview of a transracial family (a white mother and her now-adult African-American son). This clip is brief, yet touches upon many important points about race, adoption, and the necessity of "see[ing] the world in color."

Something Blue

(What follows are largely non-adoption-related thoughts, including some thoughts about religion/Christianity. If that sort of thing is not your cup of tea, you may want to stop reading here.)

This week, when I think of "blue," my thoughts tend to be less in terms of color and more in terms of melancholy. In particular, a lot of folks in the adoption blogosphere seem dismayed by a post I linked to a couple days ago, wherein one adoptive mother (a Christian) made an argument for the morality of gay couples adopting...and was promptly lambasted by other Christians in her comments section.

This reaction was saddening, no matter what your stance on this issue might be. I'm trying to stay nonpolitical here, so I'm not going to delve so much into the issue of same-sex adoption rights but rather into an auxiliary reaction I had to it--one that I think both sides can (and should!) agree with.

Namely this--that the beauty of Christianity (and the concept that seems to be missing in some of this back-and-forth blog commenting) is the concept of grace. Freely given and unmerited love from God. While we can never match the perfect grace God extends to us, we should aspire to as much--which includes showing grace to those whom we disagree with, even to those we think are sinning.

Reading these posts has reminded me of a song by one of my very favorite musicians, Sufjan Stevens. Sufjan has the honor of writing the most beautiful song ever penned about a serial killer. Strange plaudits, no doubt, but well deserved! (To download and listen to this song, click here.)

The song--entitled "John Wayne Gacy, Jr."--sets up a most uncomfortable scenario, one wherein the listener not only sympathizes with Gacy to an extent ("His father was a drinker / And his mother cried in bed / Folding John Wayne's T-shirts / When the swingset hit his head") but also identifies with him.

How could one identify with such a horrendous criminal? Sufjan, a Christian, concludes the song by posing an uncomfortable idea: "And in my best behavior / I am really just like him / Look beneath the floorboards / For the secrets I have hid."

But for grace, we are all irredeemable sinners. We all have ugly secrets hidden beneath our floorboards. Thank God that He can look beyond all our faults.

May we all learn to be more like Him.

Vote for Ethiopia Reads as CNN's
Hero Of The Year!

Got an extra minute? Then click over to CNN.com and vote in their CNN Hero Of The Year contest. Ten finalists have been selected for Hero Of The Year, among them Yohannes Gebregeorgis and his Ethiopia Reads project.

It takes only a moment to vote, and you don't even have to enter your email address. Best of all, the finalist with the most votes receives $100,000 for his/her work.

And if you're not familiar with the work of Ethiopia Reads, I encourage you to check out their website and this short video about them. This project, which strives to "develop a reading culture in Ethiopia by connecting children with books," is more than deserving of your vote.

**One minor awesome point about this video--my favorite children's book ever, Rabbit's New Rug, is featured in the background of the first shot! Awesome!

***And thanks, S, for the heads-up on this story!

Ethiopian Music - Artist Spotlight: Gigi

For today's Ethiopian artist spotlight, I'm going to make a very obvious selection. Chances are, if you've taken even a cursory peep into the world of Ethiopian music, you've sighted this artist: Ejigayehu Shibabaw, otherwise known as Gigi.

Gigi shares a number of biographical similarities with Minyeshu, the last artist I featured. They were both born and raised in Ethiopia, and both performed with the Ethiopian National Theater before emigrating.

Both married non-Ethiopian musicians (Gigi married prominent American musician/producer, Bill Laswell). Now, both are members of the Ethiopian diaspora--Minyeshu in Europe, Gigi in the United States.

Since leaving Ethiopia, Gigi has released a solid--if somewhat confusing!--discography. The confusion stems from exactly how many CDs she's released. Although her record label (Palm Records) claims that 2006's Gold & Wax CD is Gigi's "long-awaited second album," overall it seems like it's really her sixth or seventh.

So how does this add up?

First, in 1997, Gigi released two independent albums: Tsehay and a French compilation of Ethiopian love songs called Éthiope: Chants d’Amour. Both of these discs are now pretty obscure, and I haven't been able to track down a copy of either one. However, at the time, Éthiope: Chants d’Amour marked Gigi's first appearance on the music scene and paved the way for the creation of her first major album, 1998's One Ethiopia.

One Ethiopia, with its reggae-tinged title track, brought Gigi her first real taste of success within the Ethiopian community. This album, while a good effort, does not appeal to me as much as her later albums because of the production values. Its recording relies upon synthesized, computer-generated instruments, rather than actual drums, saxophones, etc. Although I know this synthesized approach is typical of Ethiopian music at the time (a cultural phenomenon that deserves a whole post of its own), it can sound dated to modern-day, Western listeners. However, as usual, Gigi's beautiful, warm vocals stand out, no matter what the background instrumentation.

Thankfully, for her next album (2001's eponymous Gigi), Gigi ditched the synthesizers in favor of real instruments, and the difference immediately leaps out of your speakers. Enveloped in earthy guitars and paced by real percussion, Gigi's voice glows. This newfound vibrancy caught the attention of music critics, and Gigi landed on many critics' "best of" lists in 2001, even earning a mention in the New York Times' “best of the obscure among 2001's albums” list:

"In songs about love and the country she left behind, Gigi's modal melodies and urgently questioning voice rise out of grooves that swirl jazz and funk into the complexities of Ethiopian pop, broadening the music without Americanizing it."

And yet, the next album Gigi released was exactly what the critics warned against: an Americanized version of her music. Sort of.

Illuminated Audio, the 2003 follow-up to Gigi, marks a strange entry in Gigi's discography, because it's not really a new album. Illuminated Audio is a remixed version of the 2001 album, Gigi, with Bill Laswell-styled redos of the same songs. Which makes for an album that isn't bad at all, but that perhaps feels a bit unnecessary. While it's enjoyable, Illuminated Audio is an album that leaves Gigi fans wishing for more, especially in the way of original material.

But Gigi made up for the potential misstep of Illuminated Audio in a big way. That same year, Gigi (as one part of a group of musicians calling themselves Abyssinia Infinite) contributed vocals to the album Zion Roots, a collaborative effort to return to the acoustic roots of traditional Ethiopian music in a meaningful, yet fresh way. And they succeed beautifully. Zion Roots is a flat-out gorgeous album.

Please do yourself a favor and buy this CD. It's one of my favorite modern Ethiopian music finds and is worth the price for the first track alone: "Bati Bati," a lush, dreamy song elevated to sublimity by Moges Habte's haunting saxophone work and Gigi's plaintive vocals. Track 7, "Aba Alem Lemenea," is also captivating. With songs this exquisite, it's no surprise that Zion Roots earned a nomination for the Critics Award in the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music in 2004.

Finally, Gigi's latest work, 2006's Gold & Wax, marked her return to a solo album. And while it doesn't rise to the thrilling aesthetic heights of Zion Roots, Gold & Wax--as one Amazon reviewer noted--"picks up right where [Gigi] left off five years ago....Not much of a departure from her debut, but there's no point in complaining about more of a very good thing."

And overall, Gigi's music is indeed a reliably good thing and an essential part of any modern Ethiopian music collection, particularly Zion Roots and Gigi.

Some of my favorite Gigi songs...

- "Bati Bati" from Zion Roots

- "Gud Fella" from Gigi

- "Gomelaleye" from Gold & Wax

- "Aba Alem Lemenea" from Zion Roots

This last song is particularly interesting to me, as the first time I heard it, it was immediately arresting; a stop-you-in-your-tracks type of song. As I was trying to describe it, the phrase that kept recurring to me was "painfully lovely," though exactly what made it "painful," I couldn't quite put my finger on (especially since I had no idea what the lyrics were saying). However, I later read an interview with Gigi where she commented on the origins of this song, saying she wrote it as a cry to God:

"'Aba Alem Lemenea' means 'Father, Why the World for Me?'. It's a song that I wrote when I was kind of sad...you know, when you feel like you don't know why people do things around you, why they say things to you, or why you love and hate at the same time, why you're rich now and poor tomorrow. It's like when I lost control of my life. You know that the world is out there, but you can't help yourself from doing bad things, like smoking. (laughs). It's spiritual song. It's also kind of a prayer to God saying 'Help me.'"

Proof yet again that the heart of any good song, its emotional truths, know no language barriers. Music itself is a truly transcendent language.

Happy Ethiopian New Year 2001!

On what is otherwise a very sad day in America, there's a reason to celebrate from the other side of the world: it's Ethiopia's New Year's Day for 2001.

No, that's not a typo--today is the first day of the year 2001, according to the Ethiopian calendar, which is based on the Coptic calendar system. Rather than me trying to explain this (and no doubting botching my explanation!), check out these descriptions of how the Ethiopic calendar system works. (Also, for adoptive parents who might be interested, the Amharic Kids website sells Ethiopian calendars and makes them available for parents to sell themselves as an adoption fundraiser.)

And to celebrate the day, I found a beautiful collage on flickr from a user named mcandrea, with all her favorite ways to celebrate Ethiopian New Year:

"Celebrating the Ethiopian new year would not be complete with out a few of my favorite things:
~yeubaunna afeulal (coffee ceremony)- classic for every celebration!
~happy new year cake- yum italian inspired goodness.
~raw meat- is in an Ethiopian thing, Kitfo-Hollar! But these special huge cube are raw cow which are prepared especially for the new years.
(correction 2007- this meat is tre-sega, kitfo is processed)
~grass on the floor - the green freshness represents the new beginning!"

Happy Ethiopian New Year, everyone!

Amharic 101 (Among Other Things...)

Continuing the trend of Ethiopia-related posts (sorry to adopters from other countries, but I've got Ethiopia on the brain lately!), I wanted to point out a couple neat resources I've stumbled upon for learning Amharic.

For those who don't already know, Amharic is the "official" language of Ethiopia. Note its distinctive Ge'ez alphabet, as pictured on the side of the elusive, Olympic-edition Ethiopian coke can featured to the left. (Side-note: I spent 30 minutes squatting in the Wal-Mart soft drink aisle, searching for Ethiopian coke cans, and ultimately had nothing to show for it but dirty jeans. To all of you who did find the Ethiopian cokes, I envy you your charming coke cans and clean pants.)

But back to the matter at hand...Amharic is spoken by about 17 million of Ethiopia's roughly 80 million citizens. So although it's the country's official language, by no means is it the only language spoken there. Tigrinya and English are also spoken widely, as well as numerous other languages and dialects. In fact, I've read about a few parents who adopted older children from Ethiopia and were surprised to find that the kids spoke only a few words of Amharic (their native languages were Tigrinya and Oromo, as I recall).

All that to say that if you're adopting from Ethiopia, there's no guarantee your children will speak Amharic fluently. But most likely they'll know at least a little bit. And even if they don't, you may want to consider learning Amharic anyway (or at least a handful of phrases) for the sake of your travels in Addis Ababa.

(Note: at this point, I must remind myself that this is supposed to be a short post. Thus, I will not even begin to address issues like learning language for the sake of maintaining your child's culture or to help facilitate future contact with your child's family members in Ethiopia. Clearly, those ideas deserve more cogent thought than this post, which was intended to be more of a "hey!-check-out-these-cool-links!" post than a "hey!-let's-try-to-parse-all-the-ethical-ramifications-of-international-adoption-and-how-it-will-change-every-aspect-of-your-daily-life-and-culture!" post. Seriously...let's all do the parsing on our own for today. I'm trying to write this before bed!)

So...ummm...hey! Check out these cool links!

First, for those wanting to know just the basics, Straight Magic (an adoptive mom of ridiculously cute Ethiopian twin girls) has a great post on the bare bones of Amharic. Written by an authentic Habesha (who was nice enough to point this resource out to me!), this is one of those posts that you think, "Wow! I will totally use that! But maybe not right now, when I'm trying to get ready for bed..." For this reason, I recommend bookmarking it. This post's a keeper.

And for the more linguistically ambitious among us, there's always the old reliable: the Foreign Service Institute's (FSI) Amharic course. The FSI courses remain about the best language-learning programs around, especially for those languages too obscure for Rosetta Stone to write software about. The downside? FSI courses cost a LOT ($200-$300 is not pocket change to me, especially when trying to finance an adoption).

The upside? Someone has put the older version of the FSI Amharic course--which is now in the public domain--online...for free! Whoever took the time to upload all these tapes and books, thank you! The Southerner in me proclaims, "Bless your heart!"

And if you're interested, you can find a whole slew of other FSI language courses online at the same site. So this post does pertain to other adoptive families, after all! You can learn Bulgarian, Cantonese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese...even Igbo and Kituba, two languages that I don't think I've ever before heard of in my life. (Although, on an interesting side-note, when I googled "Igbo," the first website that popped up was for the International Gay Bowling Organization. Funny, I didn't know that gay bowlers have their own language...)

Anyway, before this post gets any more hallucinogenic, I am going to bed. I'll leave the meatier stuff--language learning, ethics, the intersection of gay bowling leagues and Nigerian languages--to worry about tomorrow. Goodnight for now!

Ethiopian Music - Artist Spotlight: Minyeshu

I've been cogitating about how best to continue my series of posts on Ethiopian music. Why all the worry? Well, I fear that some people (heck, maybe most people) will be so unused to the sounds of Ethiopian music that if I start with something too unusual sounding, they might not give it a chance.

Case in point: my normally very musically-open-minded husband. I had loaded some Ethiopian music on the ol' iPod, and one day an Ethiopian song came up on shuffle that sounded pretty "out there" (even to me). Unfortunately, this was my husband's very first exposure to any Ethiopian music, and it kind of left a sour taste in his mouth. It has taken weeks of me sneakily absconding with his iPod and stuffing it with Ethiopian tunes to get him to give Ethiopian music another try. Thankfully, it's been a success. In fact, he commented just the other day about a song in the Ethiopiques series that he really liked.

All that to say that I don't want to get off on the same kind of rocky footing on my blog! So I've been trying to find some ferenji-friendly music (read: music that won't sound too off-the-wall to everyday Americans) to get the musical ball rolling. And I had been drawing a blank...until I ran across an artist named Minyeshu.

Right about now I might be provoking the ire of some Ethiopian folks who would argue against this choice! For starters, Minyeshu, though born and raised in Ethiopia, no longer lives there. She lives in western Europe and married a Belgian man, so strictly speaking this is diaspora music rather than music made in Ethiopia. Second, this is hardly classical Ethiopian music; it's very contemporary stuff (her most recent album was released in 2008), clearly influenced by Western music. All in all, perhaps not the most "authentically" Ethiopian choice.

However, for those leery of Ethiopian music, Minyeshu's music remains a great entry point. Sure, it's westernized, but it retains elements of classical Ethiopian music--the minor keys, some traditional sounding vocal styles, and lyrics sung in Amharic. Plus, Minyeshu was born and raised in Ethiopia, and at a young age, she began performing with the National Theater of Ethiopia. While on a musical tour in 1996, Minyeshu visited Europe and, because of political instability in Ethiopia, decided to stay in Europe and make it her home.

In 2002, she released her first solo album, Meba, which--alas!--I have not been able to find a copy of. But I have discovered her second album, 2008's Dire Dawa, and have thoroughly enjoyed it. It is (in brief) lovely, laid-back music brimming with quiet joy. And while it appeals to my Western ear, it simultaneously maintains a distinctly Ethiopian vibe. One review describes it particularly well:

"Like Aster Aweke and Gigi Shibabaw before her, Minyeshu Kifle has subtly adapted Ethiopian music for European and American sensibilities and...has added a soft-rock veneer and modern pop production to the characteristic asymmetrical rhythms and pentatonic scales of Ethiopian tradition....
[L]istening to the opener 'Halafi Nen Kealem' [sic]..., you can't help thinking that if Sheryl Crow lived in Addis Ababa rather than California, she might sound a little like this.
If that sounds critical, it isn't meant to be. The marriage of Ethiopian forms and Western pop motifs is effected with an easy panache and potency so that Minyeshu manages to sound both accessible to a wider audience yet still authentically -- and proudly -- Ethiopian at the same time."

But hey--why not judge for yourself? You can buy Minyeshu's Dire Dawa CD at Amazon. Unfortunately, because it's an import CD, it's kind of pricey: $29. So, in the interest of informed consumerism, I've taken the liberty of tracking down a couple mp3s from this album. If you choose to download them, please listen to them and then buy the CD if you like it.

Track 1 - "Halafi Nenke Alam"

Track 8 - "Buna"

(Random fact: "buna" is the Amharic word for "coffee.")

Track 11 - "Ayasresam"

Research Rundown: Ethiopian Music, Part 1

It occurs to me that while I would love to get more in-depth book reviews done, I am already up to my neck in all of the busyness happening around here right now. Nevertheless, even if I don't have time for daily book reviews, I am constantly researching one thing or another. (Need to know how to install slate flooring? How to research your creepy neighbor's criminal history? What to do with leftover blueberry bagels? You name it; I've googled it!)

As you might expect, the majority of my queries lately have been adoption-related. And because some of these research topics might actually be useful to other people, I figured I'd share. Sometimes it may be just a couple interesting links; other times it could be a whole mess of information. Either way, I hope it helps!

Today's research topic: Ethiopian music.

Ten bucks says that by now you've now guessed where we're adopting from. That's right...Colombia! No, seriously, it's as obvious as it seems: Ethiopia. And because my husband and I love music and it's always played a big part in our lives, I wanted to educate myself (however cursorily) about Ethiopian music. I figure it's a win-win endeavor: we'll learn more about Ethiopian culture and hopefully run across some cool songs in the process. Plus, anything that might help ease our kids' transition is a good thing, even if it's only background music.

With all this in mind, I set out to explore the wide world of Ethiopian music. And the biggest, most obvious entrance point is French music label Buda Musique's Ethiopiques collection, the mother lode of Ethiopian music available in the Western world. This 23-volume series compiles the highlights of Ethiopian music, primarily from the 1960s and 1970s, with each volume presenting a different artist or sub-genre of music.

Thus, from what I gather, the Ethiopiques collection tends more toward being a historical document than CDs of popular tunes you'd hear on the radio. Perhaps an American equivalent might be a CD box set of popular music through the decades, from early rock and roll to Motown to disco, etc. While most Americans would recognize songs by Elvis or The Supremes or the Bee Gees, they're not necessarily constant radio fare anymore.

Nevertheless, a number of the artists featured in the Ethiopiques series still play today and remain very popular. For example, Alèmayèhu Eshèté, Mahmoud Ahmed, and Gétatchèw Mèkurya played in New York City just a few days ago, in what looks like an incredible show! (Here's a picture of Eshèté and Ahmed that night from BrooklynVegan.)

So Ethiopiques is a great starting point for Ethiopian music...but with 23 volumes, where do you start? Thankfully, there's a 2-disc compilation, The Very Best of Ethiopiques, which gives a taste of each volume. From that, you can hopefully get a feel for the general vibe of each volume before you decide what other volumes to buy. Also, you can listen to song samples at Emusic.com.

(And as a side note, let me suggest that if you decide to purchase any of the Ethiopiques series, buy it from Emusic. As long as you don't mind buying mp3s instead of actual, physical compact discs, Emusic offers a much better deal than anywhere else I've seen.)

A little warning, though--unless you are already a fan of jazz and African world music, the music in the Ethiopiques series will probably strike you as very unusual. I know it wasn't at all what I expected. Part smoky jazz lounge, part early James Bond movie soundtrack, with a blaring emphasis on the horn section, the golden era of Ethiopian music is truly a creature unto itself! The melody structures are often complex and rarely "resolve" to the Western ear (which, of course, is not a bad thing--just different). Also, the general vibe sounds quite distinct, a kind of building, repetitious groove that at times becomes downright hypnotic. (Just today, I found myself totally zoning out to it as I was stuffing pasta shells for dinner!)

So if I sound like I'm having trouble describing this music, well, I am! The more modern, popular music of today's Ethiopia will probably strike American listeners as much more familiar-sounding, but the golden age of Ethiopian music is refreshingly unlike anything else. Which makes it that much more important to listen to it, as it symbolizes a truly unique cultural offering on the world stage--one to be proud of and to teach our children to be proud of.

As for the aforementioned Ethiopian popular music of today, well, I had planned to continue with that, but I've already written so much that I'm going to take a break for now! Let's just consider this Part 1, then! Part 2 to come soon.

And in the meantime, if you're still feeling clueless about where to start with Ethiopian music, check out Ethio-Borsaye, a "site for Ethiopians and friends" that features a music player on the upper-right hand corner of its page. There you can listen to a good mix of classic Ethiopian songs and present-day hits.

So listen for yourself and let me know what you think!