Transformation through COVID-19: A Fendika New Year Report
September is a month of celebration in Ethiopia. We celebrate the beginning of our New Year on the 11th and the Orthodox holiday of Meskel on the 27th.
This year, our celebratory mood is more than a little dampened, due to COVID-19, ethnic conflicts and political upheavals.
This time is a true test of our resilience. Fendika Cultural Center has been trying to stay active. We believe music and dance are all the more important in a time like this. The messages in our music are always peace, love, and humanity.
Before COVID-19, we maintained a busy schedule that included daily Azmari and dance performances, weekly Kayn Lab performances, bi-weekly Negarit Jazz concerts, bi-weekly Ethiocolor concerts, monthly poetry readings, and monthly visual art openings.
Photo by Haymanot Honelgne
We were also planning a busy touring season: World Performance Festival in conjunction of the Tokyo Olympics, with 27 performers (April 2020), Moers Festival in Germany with Ethiocolor, Kayn Lab, Mercato workers, and Gamo singers (May 2020), an Europe tour with Large Unit (June 2020), a coast-to-coast USA tour (September-October 2020), and a festival in Gothenberg, Sweden (October 2020).
All came to a screeching halt in March, when the global pandemic hit Ethiopia.
Photo by Haymanot Honelgne
If you have been with us in Addis Ababa, you’ll know a quiet Fendika at night is eerie, to say the least. We had our share of sadness, fear, and worries. But we wished to keep supporting Fendika’s staff and artists: about 80 people’s livelihood and careers are tied to Fendika. We accepted the fact that in this extraordinary time, we need to depend on our global network of supporters, if only temporarily. Our gratitude to Thomas Eusterbrock for creating Fendika’s GoFundMe campaign, to Bill Bragin for being a tireless advocate, mentor, and sponsor, to Vermont Oxford Network, the Cedar Cultural Center, Ethiopian Community in Seattle, and Celebrating Africa (via Multiflora Productions and Jim Thomson) for offering paid performance opportunities via the internet. And of course we thank all of you who have given us moral support, financial contribution, or subscription/attention to our YouTube channel.
Photo by Haymanot Honelgne
We had never had wifi before. It’s expensive—a luxury in Ethiopia for a small organization. But wifi became an important investment in this moment. On April 24th, Melaku offered a DJ session on Facebook to share love and energy with friends around the world.
As the Ethiopian government does not offer any COVID-19 relief to artists, our goal is to continue offering musicians and dancers work opportunities through online concert production and broadcast. Our supporters and fans are spread out all over Ethiopia and throughout the world. The internet allows us to reach out to all. Through Nubia Media, we streamed our first Fendika Live concert on May 1, on Fendika’s YouTube channel.
To date, we have aired 15 episodes of Fendika Live employing more than 40 musicians and dance artists, and 3 virtual art openings featuring 6 Ethiopian artists. Their works can be seen at fendika.org/visual-arts-gallery.
The internet became our friend during COVID-19. Melaku has been invited to give virtual talks and interviews about Ethiopian music and dance traditions and their contemporary development, including an interview June 18th with The Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis, and a conversation on Dance and Identity in Ethiopia for Ethiopian Arts Society in North America on June 20th. Melaku also spoke as a panelist at the Visa for Music symposium in June, and on the African panel at Global Toronto conference in July. Locally, Fendika artists contribute to the public health campaign about COVID-19. Melaku is an advocate for all Ethiopian artists and urges the government to support artists through COVID-19. “When you lose an artist, you lose an entire library.”
But if life has taught us anything, it is the fact that nothing can be taken for granted.
At the end of June, the internet went down in Ethiopia due to political unrest. The outage lasted 2 weeks for wifi users, and 24 days for mobile data users. We were mostly cut off from the rest of the world, we saw people being killed because of their ethnic identities, and we had to get on the street to protect our homes. Making concerts was out of the question for a month; staying engaged with our global audiences was challenging, not just due to the internet shutdown, but also because we were grieving.
Despite it all, life continues, and we must keep trying.
We have doubts about how we can go on without generating revenue from business activities. Our friends have been generous, but things are difficult for them, too, because of COVID-19. Since night-time concerts and business would not be safe, we plan to open up a day-time outdoor café with music performances, with the goal to provide employment opportunities for the locals, and to grow into an income-generating branch of Fendika in the future.
We are receiving a donation of 1000 books on arts and culture from Books for Africa project in the U.S. We plan to open a small community library in Fendika Cultural Center – the first and only library in Kazanchis. Many thanks to Professor Ron Aminzade for making this happen!
Our long-term goal is to sustain ourselves financially and to cultivate capacity to independently fund creative activities through our own entrepreneurship. As part of Addis Ababa’s urban “development,” the government has been pressuring Fendika to build up to 8 levels. We’ve been dodging the bullets, so to speak; Fendika’s very existence is always precarious. We have a vision for both architectural and business expansion; we dream of having our own recording studio, guest house for artist residencies, and additional rehearsal and performance spaces. However, given our less than solvent financial situation, our dream can only come true if there are investors who share our vision “to nurture the creative community in Addis Ababa, and to grow into one of the Africa’s most vibrant cultural centers for artistic innovation and cultural exchange grounded in rich Ethiopian heritage.”
With that vision, we wish you a happy Ethiopian New Year! We thank all of you for being wonderful friends of Fendika!
መልካም አዲስ አመት!
Photo by Haymanot Honelgne
Photo by Haymanot Honelgne
Photo by Haymanot Honelgne
A Fendika Chronicle for Ethiopian Year of 2012
(translated to: September 2019 – September 2020)
September-October, 2019: Melaku shared his knowledge about Ethiopian dance and music in the U.S. as a U.S. State Department J-1 specialist.
October 2019: Fendika musicians performed for Sigdiada Festival, Israel.
November 2019: Melaku traveled to Rabat, Morocco to receive the Visa for Music Annual Award for distinguished African artists.
December 2019: Fendika musicians performed in Switzerland.
January 2020: Timket Festival
January 2020: Funk Disciples big band began weekly performances at Fendika.
February 2020: Fendika hosted first Addis international art symposium.
March 16th: Fendika closed to the public due to COVID-19.
April 24th: Melaku gave his first online DJ session.
May 1st: First episode of Fendika Live concert was streamed on Fendika’s YouTube channel.
June 30th: Internet blackout
July 31st, Fendika back online
September 4th, New Year edition of Melaku’s DJ session
A few ways you can support Fendika through this rocky time:
Contribute: www.gofundme/f/keep-fendika-grooving
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJc3N9Lk-0hxZMDIw1_fqqw
Watch: Fendika Live concerts on the above channel, most Fridays, at 1 pm Addis Ababa time, 8 pm Europe, 1 pm US Central.
Or visit our playlist compilation of all past concerts.
Follow: https://www.facebook.com/fendika_live-108557437519330
Follow: https://www.instagram.com/fendika_live
Share: All of the above with your friends!
A fun fact and small milestone
Fendika’s YouTube channel recently became a YouTube Partner, which means modest income from ads attached to our videos. Please subscribe to us, keep watching the videos and don’t skip the ads!!!