Former beauty-pageant-winner-turned-singer Sayat Demissie vilified the Ethiopian media collectively on negative reportings saying they had no room whatsoever for constructive stories.

“In this country, the media work by tarnishing the people we love and respect,” she said at a press conference held at Harmony Hotel on Thursday. The press conference was held following an arbitration decision between her and Seifu Fantahun, host of Tadias Addis, a program on Shaggar Radio.

These days, one of the world’s great bandleaders is dedicating his energy and time to giving African traditional music its rightful place in the world

“I was doing world music 42 years ago, long before it became a genre,” says the Ethiopian composer and performer Mulatu Astatke during a recording session in Nairobi last week.

The 67 year old is credited with successfully fusing Western jazz and funk with traditional Ethiopian folk melodies, and elements of music of the ancient Coptic Church. “I became a student of jazz composition and combined that knowledge with Ethiopian music to give birth to Ethio-jazz,” he says.

A show of photos about “cross cultural encounters” and one in which a ceramist comes to terms with his mother's death last February are on view at Individual Artists of Oklahoma. Showing their work are Eyakem Gulilat, a Norman artist originally from Ethiopia, and Howard Koerth, an Oklahoma City artist who is a faculty member at Rose State College in Midwest City.

Gulilat combines photographs of himself and a second subject, both wearing Ethiopian garb, with a landscape filling the space between them, in his well-composed but understated 24-by-50-inch triptychs.
Goats seem to wander between the two figures, connecting them in some way, in “06” from Gililat's series, for example, as do an open aluminum-hued travel suitcase, a dark bag and a black chicken in “05.”

Addis Ababa- January 15, 2012- Ethiopian music history witnessed several short lived, but in one way or another extraordinary bands. After the military orchestra at the end of 1950s and the beginning of 1960s, introduced modern musical sounds for, several privately owned bands started to emerge here and there. Especially during the golden era of the Ethiopian music, the 1970s have seen bands that transformed the sound to a timeless melody.

Addis Ababa- January 15, 2012- A festival promoting Japanese culture and facilitate better understanding of Japanese development assistance was held here in Addis Ababa at Juventus Club. The festival was co-organized by the Embassy of Japan and the Japan International Cooperation Agency. The theme of the festival was ‘One for all. All for one”.

Africa's musical influences continue to spread, even to Switzerland. When the Geneva-based trumpet-player Raphael Anker started listening to the Ethiopiques series of recordings, many of them from the 60s and 70s, he decided to begin playing his own versions. He's not the first musician to be impressed by the jazz, soul and funk of Ethiopia's golden age; it has inspired some great music from the likes of Dub Colossus and the Heliocentrics.

Contemporary Ethiopian musicians reinvigorate traditional jazz stylings for new audiences in America and Addis Ababa. During the second half of the 20th century, cosmopolitan Ethiopians were delighted to see jazz giant Duke Ellington receive their country's Medal of Honor from Emperor Haile Selassie. At the same time, by contrast, a Berklee College of Music-trained Ethiopian jazz legend, Mulatu Astatke, who fused jazz and funk with his country's folk and Coptic Church melodies, was unknown in the United States.

Northwestern College’s touring theatre company will perform their most recent worship drama, “Iowa Ethiopia,” in churches and schools in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, December 26 through January 6.

“Iowa Ethiopia” is drawn from the biographical archive of Arlene Schuiteman, a nurse missionary to the Sudan and Ethiopia in the 1960s and ’70s. After Sudan’s Civil War forced her expulsion from that country, Schuiteman traveled to Ethiopia. There she helped open a “dresser school” in the city of Mettu, teaching wound care and other medical skills to health care workers.

A MUSICAL mentor program is developing emerging artists from multicultural backgrounds. Established by Multicultural Arts Victoria in 2005, Visible is a music-mentorship program linking a diverse array of musicians with some of Melbourne’s best producers. With the 2011 program now at an end, the artists involved have produced an album - Visible 6 - which will be launched this weekend. Many of the musicians involved arrived in Australia after fleeing troubles in their homelands.

I have just finished reading ‘Terarochin Yanketekete Tiwild’ (The Generation that Shook the Mountains), a compilation of biographies of some of Ethiopia's revolutionaries of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s – young minds that passionately fought against injustice, inequality and oppression, and eventually brought down King Haile Sellasie and dictator Mengistu Hailemariam. Among those amazing, selfless martyrs mentioned in the book is Martha Mebrahtu whose tragic murder not only angered but also inspired thousands of young men and women who stood up and waged a bitter struggle for democracy and gave Ethiopia's oppressed the chance to finally see light at the end of the tunnel.

While most entertainers itch and beg for any recognition possible, Toronto's up-and-coming R&B star Abel Tesfaye is gaining fame in a much rarer way: through his skill. Active since 2008, Abel started out as a complete unknown. And even when the band or artist name "The Weeknd" began to surface late last year, nobody had a clue it was linked to Abel, still a nobody.

Walking down a main street in Addis, I met this young character. We started talking and soon became friends. One day, he invited me to his home to try some famous Ethiopian coffee, prepared traditionally. As I drank cup after cup of exquisite, freshly roasted coffee, this scene emerged in front of me. In a way it described my experience of Ethiopia, and other African nations I had worked in: a rapidly changing, dynamic world where tradition and modernity struggle to coexist. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Photo/caption credit: Jason Benovoy

One of her parents is from Bermuda, the other is Ethiopian. So it’s hardly surprising American singer-songwriter Rachel Brown’s music fuses island, world, hip-hop and even country sounds into an enchanting groove. Her music is so enchanting, in fact, she recently won on-line gossip/entertainment maven Perez Hilton’s regular song cover competition — beating out hundreds of other contenders with her version of the David Guetta/Usher collaboration “Without You”. The self-taught musician was born and raised in New York but first made her musical mark here on the island two years ago with a series of appearances at Chewstick, Beachfest and the Bermuda Music Festival.

Addis Ababa, November 18, 2011 (Addis Ababa) - The government of Ethiopia launched here on Friday its strategy to deliver green economic growth for the country.
The plan named “Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE)” is released just weeks before the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Conference of Parties (COP17) takes place in Durban, South Africa. It sets out how the government’s dual objectives of lifting Ethiopia to middle income status by 2025 can be achieved while keeping greenhouses gas emissions constant, and marks an important milestone on Ethiopia’s path towards sustainable development.

It was one part student activism, one part cultural education and one part celebration at Cascadia Community College as Mobius Hall was filled Tuesday night with the sights, sounds and even the fragrances of Ethiopia. The impetus for the event was a book drive, spearheaded by Cascadia students earlier this year, which resulted in thousands of books delivered to schools in rural Ethiopia.