The Greatest Ethiopian Entertainer

"I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music."

George Eliot (1819 - 1880)

By Ketsela

I had a rare opportunity to see "THE GREAT TILAHUN GESSESSE"'s concert on Saturday night. By no means am I considered a concertgoer. In my life I attended three Ethiopian concerts and two of them were of Tilahun. Please, do not assume anything different, the only reason I did not attend other Ethiopian concert was that they schedule at 8 pm and never start until 11 pm. Yes, it was the same with the Tilahun concert but I can wait even longer for his. That is the least I can do for a man who lived to entertain me for all my life. Yes, he was on a wheel chair but nothing was different since last I saw him here in Minneapolis or when I saw him back in Ethiopia. Ah! Those eyes still sing along with his lips and confirm the sincere messages he was delivering then and now.

One can sit and compile his songs and will be able to write a book about us Ethiopians - our nature, poverty, war, love, relationship and can be a best seller in the New York Book Review. And I mean it too. Tilahun has touched every Ethiopian generation. If not yours, your parents; if not your parents, your grandparents’. Certainly, there were many titled songs that disappeared due to censorship. Do you readers know that once Tilahun brought a dog on stage and sang "MY DOG" in front of the Emperor Haile Selassie? Some part of the lyrics went like this:

Got punished for it too. I might be from the old school in being a music lover, and yet I witnessed young men and women crying and sobbing by the sight of seeing him. This is one Ethiopian I know and love. Once on Medrek,  a reader condemned him for not singing a Tigrigna song.  I feel the individual loves him as much as I do, but he/she seemed to blame him for his linguistic inability. There is a Latin saying that goes "They condemn what they do not understand". To me, that sounded like blaming a young white man or woman for being responsible for the act of slavery. Consider it just as an analogy. Music, like a great painting, is designed to express the social significance of the situation of the people. I remember once an Ethiopian painter told me that if he paints a cup of tea with a lemon on the side, viewers must and should smell the tea and lemon. That seemed to be the quality of Tilahun in his music for Ethiopia and to Ethiopians. In the same token all the songs made by Tilahun carry messages reflecting the ETHIOPIA we know and love. The art of his songs are relayed from generation to generation and can be translated in more than one ways. They all smell good, look good and gurantee individual and socital satisfaction.

What Tilahun proved to me last Saturday was that being handicap is just a state of mind; I see no difference in him when singing, smiling and moving his body to the tune of the music.
I may not be an expert to compare Ethiopian singers; it is because this was only my third one to attend an Ethiopian concert in America. Two of them were for one and only one Tilahun. Come on! Readers, it was not because I do not like to listen to an Ethiopian music but only that the organizers tell me it start will at 9 but let me sit in an empty hall for about three hours. And I go stag too.

I just like to THANK Ato Tilahun for all contributions he has done to entertain me through out his life.