Ethiopian pop, American R&B featured in Collar City
TROY, N.Y.>> The ecstatic sounds of Ethiopian pop and American R& B will fill one Collar City venue this weekend when Ethiopian-American singer/songwriter Meklit performs with her band in Troy as part of a national album release tour.
The event will take place at 7 p.m. on Saturday at the The Sanctuary for Independent Media, located at 3361 6th Ave. in Troy.
Local show- goers can hear from the San Francisco Bay Area-based artist, who has been called a cultural instigator.
Meklit Hadero will bring her pop, jazz and Ethiopian vision to the Sanctuary stage. Her music sits on the hyphen line, born as equally from San Francisco as it is from Addis Ababa.
Meklit’s third record is being released this spring on Six Degrees Records and is produced by multi-Grammy winning artist/ songwriter Dan Wilson (Adele, John Legend, Dixie Chicks).
Deeply inspired by Mulatu Astatke (the Godfather of Ethio-Jazz), the songs shine with pentatonic melodies, Ethio groove, and a singer- songwriter’s poetic core. It is immigrant music and American music all at the same time.
Meklit’s music is imbued with poetry and multiplicity, from hybridized sounds of Tizita (haunting and nostalgic music) drawing from her Ethiopian heritage, to jazz, folk songs, hip-hop and art rock. She aptly describes her music as emanating from “in-between-spaces.”
The local concert will feature her songs that celebrate the newness of life and the hyphens that bring people together.
In addition to her musical career, Meklit is a TED Senior Fellow and her TED Talk, The Unexpected Beauty of Everyday Sounds, has been watched by more than 1 million people. She has received musical commissions from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the MAP Fund and has toured extensively across the U. S., U.K., and East Africa. As an artist-inresidence at universities including NYU and Purdue, she explores questions of cultural activism, thinking about how music and arts can help us ask questions about who we are and where we want to go collectively. In 2011, she co-founded the Nile Project with Egyptian ethnomusicologist Mina Girgis, which the New York Times called “a committed, euphoric, international coalition.”
Meklit sits on the board of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, on the Artist Council of the de Young Museum, and holds a BA from Yale University.
For more information on Meklit and her music visit www.meklitmusic.com.
Admission to Saturday’s all-ages event is $15.
For further details, or to purchase tickets in advance, visit www.mediasanctuary.org or call 518-272-2390.
This presentation is made possible by support from the New York State Council on the Arts, volunteer labor and thousands of small donations from patrons of The Sanctuary for Independent Media, which is a telecommunications production facility dedicated to community media arts, located in an historic former church in Troy. The Sanctuary hosts screening, production and performance facilities, training in media production and a meeting space for artists, activists and independent media makers of all kinds.
More information on upcoming events can be found at www.mediasanctuary.org.