(June 23, 2011, San Francisco, SFGate)--Last month, Meklit Hadero toured East Africa with her band, delivering her singular mix of caressingly lyrical original songs and traditional Amharic melodies to audiences of HIV-positive orphans, rural villagers and urban dwellers.
Earlier this month, the Ethiopian-born San Francisco singer-songwriter was belting out "Cold Sweat" at Yoshi's in saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis' show "Still Black, Still Proud: An African Tribute to James Brown.
" It might seem like a stretch, but Hadero is used to straddling cultures, and as a protean artist bent on exploring different styles and grooves, she brought regal grace to the Godfather of Soul's relentless funk.
"So much of my work is about multiplicity," says Hadero, who performs tonight in her first Bay Area appearance with her band since returning from Ethiopia.
"I've got a bunch of different projects in the works and they're all very different. I've never wanted to be the kind of artist who makes one kind of music." If Hadero needed affirmation that she's on the right creative path, she got all the necessary props last month in Addis Ababa.
At the start of her travels with her band and the Arba Minch Collective, a project that Hadero helped found in 2009 to bring together Ethiopian-American artists, the legendary Ethiopian pianist-composer Mulatu Astatke came by her gig and professed his love for her voice. Read more from SFGate »
" It might seem like a stretch, but Hadero is used to straddling cultures, and as a protean artist bent on exploring different styles and grooves, she brought regal grace to the Godfather of Soul's relentless funk.
"So much of my work is about multiplicity," says Hadero, who performs tonight in her first Bay Area appearance with her band since returning from Ethiopia.
"I've got a bunch of different projects in the works and they're all very different. I've never wanted to be the kind of artist who makes one kind of music." If Hadero needed affirmation that she's on the right creative path, she got all the necessary props last month in Addis Ababa.
At the start of her travels with her band and the Arba Minch Collective, a project that Hadero helped found in 2009 to bring together Ethiopian-American artists, the legendary Ethiopian pianist-composer Mulatu Astatke came by her gig and professed his love for her voice. Read more from SFGate »
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