Obituary: Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru (1923-2023)

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 188, June 2023.



It’s a rare and beautiful thing to experience an artist whose work is utterly their own, that defies easy comparison or categorisation; to listen to music that one can only meaningfully describe using abstract, effusive terms. That is the music that Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru made when she sat down at her piano.

Her music is a unique style of Ethiopian pianism. It contains depths. The elegant cascades of her piano’s keys call forth memories, histories, influences: Beethoven, Debussy, Art Tatum, Satie, Chopin, Scott Joplin, courtly waltzes, Ethiopian Orthodox chants and folk melodies, the dignified hymns of the giant begena lyre, life’s hardships and joys, her beloved family members, her deep spirituality, her compassion. Her pieces don’t flourish in virtuosity, but precision; masterworks of chiaroscuro, they offer comfort, suspense and surprise. Languid rubato and unexpected turnarounds of tonality make her music drift and flow like heavy frankincense smoke, or a tide, or a waterfall. There is no separating composition from performance, as they are both hers alone.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam’s life story is just as astonishing. Born Yewubdar Gebru into an important political family in Addis Ababa in 1923, she had a whirlwind of an early life, with time as a schoolgirl in Switzerland, a prisoner-of-war in Italy, and a scholar of European classical violin and piano in Egypt. A promising career beckoned, but Yewubdar’s musical life was abruptly halted when Emperor Selassie refused her permission to continue her studies in England. After falling into depression and illness, faith guided her to sneak away to a monastery in the countryside. By the time she was 25, Yewubdar had become a nun of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, taking the title of Emahoy and changing her name to Tsege-Mariam.



It was after taking the veil that she created her singular musical style and composed most of her 150-plus works. But the music has always been just one thread in her life’s work of charity. Upon witnessing the homelessness of young people studying at her church, she dedicated herself to the poor and needy. Whenever she recorded her compositions and released albums, she made sure that all the proceeds went directly to orphanages. After several years of working for the Orthodox church in Jerusalem, Tsege-Mariam eventually moved to the Holy City for good in 1984. Living a semi-hermetic life in a monastery, she continued to help the poor in Israel and Ethiopia, continuing to practice piano daily.

It was in these later years that her music started to get the reach and attention it deserved, spearheaded by a compilation of her older recordings as Éthiopiques, Vol. 21 in 2006. The album was a revelation, and gained her fans around the world. Her compositions have been used in various film soundtracks, a documentary about her own life is currently in production, and two more albums of her work are set to be released in 2023 – with all proceeds, as ever, to those in need.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru died months short of her 100th birthday. In a review of her latest album, Jerusalem, I wrote that ‘Emahoy Tsege-Mariam is a living musical treasure.’ She may no longer be with us, but the treasure of her music will live for a long time to come.


Photo by kind permission of the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Foundation.

Obituary: Bruno Nettl (1930-2020)

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 156, April 2020.

Teacher, mentor, writer and pre-eminent ethnomusicologist

From fleeing the holocaust from Czechoslovakia to the US as a child, to being a founding member of the Society of Ethnomusicology, to being one of that field’s most well-respected figures, Bruno Nettl’s life and work is nothing short of remarkable.

In terms of musical study, Nettl wrote on subjects as diverse as the indigenous traditions of North America and the classical music of Iran, but he is perhaps best known for his studies of the field of ethnomusicology itself. No budding ethnomusicologist can avoid his book The Study of Ethnomusicology, a work he first published in 1983 and updated continuously throughout his life, which lays out the essential thought processes and discussions that scholars should undertake before, during and after their research.

Writing at length about the intricacies and philosophies behind study itself is one of those things that can quickly get very dense and very dry, but Nettl’s particular talent was presenting his thoughts in an in-depth and authoritative way while remaining easily accessible and even down-right entertaining. I don’t think I’ve read another ethnomusicologist who is as comfortable making puns and dad-level jokes as Nettl.

Across any field, and certainly within ethnomusicology, it would be hard to come across a person whose work has consistently defined and redefined the meanings of the discipline throughout such a long career as Bruno Nettl. He will be missed, but his work and words will echo on. A memorial concert will be held for Nettl on May 10 at the University of Illinois in Urbana.


Photo: Bruno Nettl, by L. Brian Stauffer.

Obituary: Chartwell Dutiro (1957-2019)

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 153, December 2019.



Chartwell Dutiro was a key figure in the repopularisation of the mbira in Zimbabwean society after decades of its proscription by Rhodesian authorities. As a member of Thomas Mapfumo’s iconic chimurenga band Blacks Unlimited, Dutiro originally played saxophone and percussion but pushed for the inclusion of the mbira, an instrument he had played since childhood. It was a revolutionary act. The sound of the mbira would become crucial to the power of chimurenga music.

After leaving the Blacks Unlimited in 1993, he moved to the UK. He gained a degree at SOAS, University of London, where his work was published as a book, Zimbabwean Mbira Music on an International Stage. He went on to teach at SOAS for some years before setting up his own dedicated school, the Mhararano Mbira Academy, and running international mbira gatherings across Europe and North America. All the while, Dutiro continued to perform and record solo and with a number of his own bands, and was featured many times in the pages of Songlines, including a profile right at the beginning in issue #2.

Dutiro died from cancer at his home in Devon on September 22. He had just learnt that he was to be awarded an honorary doctorate from Bath Spa University.


Photo: Chartwell Dutiro (right) performs with Thomas Mapfumo (left) and Blacks Unlimited in New York in 1989, by Banning Eyre.

Obituary: Ayub Ogada (1956-2019)

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 146, April 2019.



A giant of Kenyan music has passed away. Ayub Ogada died on February 1 at his home in Kisumu, after an illness. He was a master of the nyatiti, an eight-stringed lyre of the Luo people, on which he accompanied his beautiful voice. Ogada, under his birth name Job Seda, had a massive impact on the Kenyan music scene through the bands he founded, Black Savage and the African Heritage Band, whose influences are still felt in the country today. International audiences will probably be most familiar with his 1993 album En Mana Kuoyo, released on Real World Records, containing a quiet, intimate version of his most well-known song, the haunting lullaby ‘Kothbiro’. He was first noticed by Real World busking on the London Underground, but went on to perform around the world and collaborate with artists such as Peter Gabriel, Geoffrey Oryema, Afro Celt Sound System, Susheela Raman and even Gary Barlow; most recently, his work was sampled by Kanye West. In his tribute to Ogada, Gabriel said: “In the early days of WOMAD and Real World Records, many people weren’t interested to listen to music from other cultures and whenever I was trying to convince them, I would play Ayub singing ‘Kothbiro’ and invariably win them round.”


Photo: Ayub Ogada, by Andrew Catlin.

Obituary: Adel Salameh (1966-2019)

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 146, April 2019.

The Palestinian oud player Adel Salameh died on January 23. Born in Nablus and growing up in the nearby city of Tulkarm, Salameh first learnt the oud in informal, social settings, but took it to the next level by studying music at university, first in Jordan and then Iraq. After settling in Europe in 1990, he became instrumental in the promotion of the oud across the continent.

He was particularly known for his international collaborations, including the celebrated duet with Indian sarod player Krishnamurti Sridhar (released as the album The Arab Path to India on WOMAD Select in 1996), and performing with jazz, flamenco and North African musicians. He was passionate about promoting the oud to as many listeners and would-be performers as possible, teaching classes all across Europe and even organising an intensive week-long ‘oud camps’ in Switzerland. Long-time readers of Songlines will be familiar with Salameh from a Tools of the Trade feature in #5, which examined the history and construction of the oud, as well as his own close personal relationship with the instrument.


Photo: Adel Salameh, by Laure Abouaf.

Obituary: Ravi Shankar (1920-2012)

First published on Musika.uk.com in December 2012.



Sitarist and composer Pandit Ravi Shankar, KBE, died on Tuesday, 11th December 2012, at the Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego, USA.

A true innovator of Hindustani classical music, Shankar learnt to play in the Maihar gharana of his guru Ustad Allaudin Khan, which he used to adapt his own style, fusing dhrupad, khyal and thumri genres as well as incorporating elements from the Carnatic (South Indian) style of classical music, one of the first Hindustani musicians to do so.

But Shankar also expanded his repertoire far and beyond the classical music of his training. Being influenced by European classical styles, to which he was exposed during a period in France as a child, he composed ballets, concertos, a symphony and several original soundtracks for film. He also collaborated with Western art musicians and composers such as Yehudi Menuhin, André Previn and Philip Glass.

He was most well-known throughout the world, however, for his introduction of Indian music into the Western popular mind-set through collaborations with rock musicians, most famously George Harrison, to whom he taught the sitar, as well as recording several albums together. His association with Harrison lead to his appearances at festivals such as the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock and, famously, on the American TV show the Dick Cavett Show. He also opened the Concert for Bangladesh, organised by Harrison, in jugalbandi (duet) with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.

Shankar had continued to tour until 2011, and was still performing concerts as recently as last month, his final performance coming on 4th November, near his home in California.

He is survived by his wife, Sukanya and his two daughters, both famous musicians in their own rights, pop-jazz singer Norah Jones and sitarist Anoushka Shankar. His son, Shubhendra ‘Shubho’ Shankar died in 1992.


Photo: Womadelaide 10 Ravi Shankar and Anoushka Shankar (India), by PeterTea. Used under licence CC BY-ND 2.0.