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ARTIST/Dr.
Telahun Gessese: The Thunderous voice of the King of Music
By
Teodros Kiros, PhD
 Joy.
Laughter. Dance and more dance. Pride and tradition, modernity
and Classism. These were the languages of the Ethiopian
youth and some of their parents on this cold winter night
as they jubilantly flooded the dance floor.
The
dance floor at a huge hall readied to accommodate over
a thousand people bursting with the exuberance of youth,
the fire of joy, the swings and twists of modern Ethiopian
dance responding to the groveling multicultural band of
a Caucasian trumpeter, an oriental clarinet and an Ethiopian
female singer dominated this winter night in the city
of Watertown, Ma, on December 9, 2006.
The
King of music was hidden somewhere in the background.
The crowd which knew his lurking presence was anxious
with apprehension, for it knew that the handsome man from
the land of AtumRa, the Egyptian transcendent, about whom
the late King of Ethiopian poetry, Mr. Tsegaye Gebremedhin
wrote, was lurking in the background -living music, quietly
singing its verses, endlessly perfecting the performance
for the historic night and drinking from the endless well
of wisdom and love The crowd too wanted to quench its
thirst by drinking from the King’s music, the King’s
passion.
He
was there in the back, but no where to be seen.
The music roared on, and youth danced with hips swinging,
shoulders vibrating and legs moving gracefully and carrying
the anxious bodies of hundreds of Ethiopians patiently
waiting for the appearance of the King himself.
The
Doctor of Music held on and kept the crowd waiting. Dance.
More dance. Shouts and more shouts. The music roared on
and the Saxophone was going out of control.
Finally, a man, larger than life, firmly planted on a
wheel chair makes his way to the center of the stage,
and the seated audience of Ethiopian celebrities leave
their seats, rise and walk to the ends of the stage and
salute and pay their tribute to Dr. Telahun Gessee, the
Ethiopian genius, the man who has no match, and whose
feet will never be filled by another singer shoes.
He
is Ethiopian music at the height of its perfection, and
the depth of its living wisdom. With him music is philosophy
and philosophy itself attains the musicality that the
ancients have yearned. In his hands music becomes a therapy
for those whose hearts have been broken by love, for all
those who know the dangers of love and still dare to taste
its bitter/ sweet pills.
To
them he came to sing this night on a wheel chair reserved
for all those geniuses that God has chosen for one of
his hidden missions toward the last part of their living
lives. The king of music was chosen for a mission and
he carried it with a biting courage and embodied it on
an extraordinary intelligence of the human heart.
Medium height, chiseled nose, a long face and an arresting
complexion, the doctor /artist sat on and sung to eternity.
Love,
death, sorrow, purpose, silence, solitude, and the joy
that kills were the themes of his heartbreaking songs.
He grabbed the microphone so close to his soul and projected
that voice, which refuses to die in the air, until the
listener is driven to tears and the heart is threatened
with the possibility of death. His music is fated to bring
the audience to the brink of joy, the joy that could kill,
and the fulfillment that makes you move towards God.
His
music is spiritual and carnal, therapeutic and transcdental,
which takes you behind the veil of appearance to the depth
of the hidden reality. Yes he sung tirelessly as he has
for the last five centuries as the King of Ethiopian music.
The
night was over and the reluctant crowd parted with respect
and gratefulness to the transcendent for implanting this
man in the Ethiopian soil, and now as he moves towards
death, he is crowned with the mission to serve, to do
the Lord’s work, and so I was lucky to breakfast
with him at the Red Sea, Boston’s premier Ethiopian
restaurant, shortly before he left.
When
we met there on a sunny Sunday, he mused for over an hour
and half about music and its vocation. His mission now
is to open a clinic for the victims of Diabetes, the very
disease, which confined him to a wheel chair, from where,
a night before, he sung with arresting brilliance, candor,
and purposefulness, of a young man, born to sing with
the vigor of agelessness.
Participating
in a long debate about the role of the artist in the age
of “mechanical reproduction,” he argued compellingly
that for him, “the artist is a harbinger of change,
a moral mediator of human values, and that his long dream
had been to fight for the brick layers, the Gold and silver
smiths, and the lowly paid soldiers and maids who break
their back to make a living, and are then stereotyped
by the rich and powerful as unfit and unqualified to marry
whom ever they love, by being cast away as the untouchable”
He
continued, “I have attempted to play a part in restoring
their dignities, and now their children are in visible
political spaces running administrative centers of power,
all the way from the palace to the modern bureaucracies”.
His classic song “Kememot Aldenem” does indeed
herald their names and sing their praises, and they in
turn gave him the tragic thematics of his songs, delivered
with inimitable voice, clear and deep- for the last fifty
three years.
For
he had began singing at the tender of age eleven, and
had not stopped since. He remembered those early years
fondly. He praised all those artists of the past, from
Germany to the USA, who used art to be the mediator of
meaning without loosing its autonomy and serving the whims
of power holders; he praised even more all those Ethiopian
artists of the past who fought for the poor by making
them present in our consciences and our lives.
For
him, “ Art is both free and restrained, it is free
to create out of the imagination by constructing its own
laws of beauty and standards of excellence, and restrained
by the commitment to the public, its joys and pains and
its dreams and frustrations”
He has used art as autonomous and engaged, private and
public. What pleased him most was the presence of the
young who came to see him, to touch him and on whom he
attempted to pass on his unfulfilled mission of fighting
for the afflicted, the poor, the overburdened, the alienated
and all those who are languishing inside the gates of
poverty.
At
one weak moment he cried and said, “Inspite of the
limited numbers of those who came, I am lucky that I have
seventy five million Ethiopians backing me in my endeavor
to do the Lord’s work, which is service to Ethiopian
humanity, service to art and the artist as a social agent,
as a purposeful mediator of truth and justice in the right
way and at the right time. Ethiopians are my social capital,
the source and foundations of my music. How much I long
to open a school on the human voice, so that the tradition
of classical Ethiopian music could be passed on across
generations”
The King was moved by the hundreds of youth who stretched
their longing hands to touch the genius’ soul by
feeling his tender and loving hands. They stood by him
adoringly, they took pictures of him for remembrance of
things past. Some cried. Some froze with hypnotized stares,
and many danced to death.
He
remembered them all with eyes filled with unshed tears,
he remembered them because they vindicated him, because
they know first hand the power of Eros, the urge to create
by always being behind the limits of experience, where
art meets danger, and where life risks death, for the
sake of creating and following the silent laws of beauty,
of tragedy and death itself.
Towards
the end, Mr. Bekele and Ms. Misrak, the generous owners
of the Red Sea Restaurant, and Mr. Tadesse, the distinguished
owner of Quality@Your Service, a very close friend of
the Artist/ Doctor, and I, pushed the wheelchair on which
sat the King of Ethiopian music up from the basement floor,
and thus left the voice of love, of hope and of faith.
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