The music of the pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, who has died at the age of 99, seemed to reflect every area of her extraordinary life. A daughter of Addis Ababa’s upper classes, she was immersed in Ethiopian traditional song, then trained in classical violin and piano, embraced early jazz and later took holy orders. So it’s quite fitting that her compositions were a curious fusion of fin de siècle parlour piano, gospel, ragtime, Ethiopian folk music and the choral traditions of the country’s Orthodox church. A BBC radio documentary on her work was entitled The Honky Tonk Nun, and it seemed to sum up the paradoxical nature of her music – a mix of high and low art, sacred and profane, precise notation and free improvisation.
Emahoy might have remained unknown to the outside world were it not for the French musicologist Francis Falceto, who worked with the record label Buda Music to release an album of her archive recordings in 2006. It was part of a series of compilation albums of Ethiopian music entitled Éthiopiques. The series was a revelation, even to many people who thought they were familiar with Africa’s best music. Where there are certain instruments, rhythms, scales and voicings that are shared by several different regions around the continent, the music of Ethiopia – one of the world’s oldest Christian civilisations – stands distinct and discrete from anything in neighbouring countries.
