Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou

A composer and pianist as well as an Orthodox nun, Ethiopian Orthodox nun, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou was born Yewrubdar Gebru on December 12, 1923, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. While she recorded very little during her lifetime, her blending of classical, jazz, and blues was nonetheless influential. When she was six, she was sent to boarding school in Switzerland to study violin. While learning to play classical music, she also discovered Western music. She moved back to Ethiopia in 1933 and became a civil servant and singer to the emperor of Ethiopia. She and her family became prisoners of war during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and were sent to a prison camp in Italy. After the war, she met and studied under violinist Alexander Kontorowics in Cairo, Egypt. After moving back to Ethiopia, she worked as an administrative assistant and, when she was 21, became a nun. After spending 10 years with a hilltop monastery, she left the convent and moved back with her family. She reconnected with music and began to compose her original music that combined Ethiopian traditional music, jazz, and Western classical music. She released her first album, Spielt Eigene Kompositionen, in 1963. Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou moved to an Ethiopian monastery in Jerusalem, Israel, and started a foundation to help poor children. She recorded several more albums - The Hymn of Jerusalem, The Jordan River Song (1970) and Yet My King Is from Old (1972) – before taking a four-decade long break in releasing music. Her next album, The Visionary – Piano Solo, was released in 2012 and followed by the album Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou (2016). Due to interest in her music on several compilations, her music was discovered by an international audience. She became the subject of a 2017 documentary entitled The Honky Tonk Nun, which was directed by Kate Molleson (2017). Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou died on Marcy 27, 2023, at the age of 99. Two weeks after her death, her label released the album Jerusalem.

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