Synthesizer and portastudio: their roles in the Tigrayan People’s Liberation struggle - an audio essay

In January 1987 I left London and, travelled, under cover of night, across the Sudanese border into Tigray province, Northern Ethiopia on a convoy of lorries carrying food and other essentials. This area of North West Tigray was under control of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in dispute with the Derg, the Ethiopian Government, the most heavily armed regime in Africa, headed by Colonel Mengistu and backed by Soviet Russia. We were, at the invitation of the cultural troupes of the TPLF, an arm of the propaganda bureau, joining them at a specially convened music school, housed in a series of makeshift huts in the remote Kaza valley. For six months the cultural troupes ceased all but the most important of performances while they learnt to notate their music; arrange traditional Tigrayan music for modern electric instruments and to record and produce their work. That these activities were so prioritised by the TPLF is evidence of the importance of music, dance and drama in the liberation struggle for Tigray and the fight for the hearts and minds of the people.

In 2019 we returned to Tigray and met up with some of pour former students to find out what had happened to both the liberation struggle and the legacy of the Gureza music school.

This audio essay with accompanying text and photographs explores the historic need to modernise the traditional Ethiopian music that the TPLF cultural troupes were drawing on as well as the methods and legacy of that work.

Herri is conceived, curated and edited by Aryan Kaganof published by Stephanus Muller for Africa Open Institute.

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