She had taken orders in the 1940s, after a tragic and adventurous youth in the entourage of the last emperor of Ethiopia. She had been renowned since the 1960s for her piano playing and compositions, which critics compared to Erik Satie and Charlie Mingus. Sister Tsegué-Mariam Guèbrou died on March 27, 2023, at the age of 99, in the monastery of Jerusalem where she lived as a recluse.
Ups, downs, and the modal system so particular to Ethiopian music, under agile and powerful hands. A little reclusive light in a shy face, under the narrow hood of the nuns of the Debre Genet convent, the so-called “Paradise” monastery in Jerusalem… Such was Sister Tsegue-Mariam Gebru.
This pious and secretive little woman came from very far away. 1923 to be exact, the year she was born into a wealthy family in Addis Ababa.
A musical dream shattered by Emperor Haile Selassie I
Tsegue-Mariam is this little Ethiopian discovering the violin and great European music in boarding school in Switzerland in the 1930s, this privileged teenager at the Imperial Court, finally a prisoner of Mussolini’s invading army, locked up in Italy. And this young woman, prodigiously gifted, whom a Polish violinist brings back to the country after the war, by taking the direction of the orchestra of the Guard of the Emperor.
But Haile Selassie I smashes his dream: he refuses to allow the young woman to perfect her piano in London. So, humiliated, dejected, she enters the orders, at 23 years old. Her life then boils down to the austerity of the monastery, in the Ethiopian hinterland, and the illness that brings her back to town with her family. Then again in exile in Jerusalem in 1984, driven out by the Mengistu dictatorship. With the piano for another refuge, after God.
“It was as if each of his fingers were listening to each other play, while playing…”
“Emahoy”, that is to say “sister” Tsegue-Mariam Gebru finally enjoyed late glory, in the 2000s, thanks to the “Ethiopic” compilations of musicologist Francis Falceto. His records and his concerts were used exclusively to finance charitable works. One of the artists to popularize her music during an international tour in 2013 is the Israeli Maya Dunietz.
The first thing that struck me in his music was his relationship to time, this very particular flow. On the one hand, it has a structure of a sonata, or a classical piece, but at the same time it has this flavor so different from anything I had ever heard. Her performances at the piano were very singular
Maya Dunietz, Israeli pianist and interpreter of Tsegue-Mariam Guèbrou
“ Emahoy was very sweet and agelessunderlines this pianist at the microphone of Leonard Vincent. Looking at his face, you couldn’t tell his age. She was like a little girl and an old lady at the same time. It was very deep, but only revealed itself slowly, like a fountain of treasures which only reveals itself gently… The first thing that struck me in his music was his relationship to time, this very particular flow . On the one hand, it has the structure of a sonata, or a classical piece, but at the same time it has this flavor so different from anything I had heard. And then her performances at the piano were very unique. It was as if each finger was listening to itself play, while playing… »