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Re: 01-06-2012
The music of the pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, who has died at the age of 99, seemed to reflect every area of her extraordinary life. A daughter of Addis Ababa’s upper classes, she was immersed in Ethiopian traditional song, then trained in classical violin and piano, embraced early jazz and later took holy orders. So it’s quite fitting that her compositions were a curious fusion of fin de siècle parlour piano, gospel, ragtime, Ethiopian folk music and the choral traditions of the country’s Orthodox church. A BBC radio documentary on her work was entitled The Honky Tonk Nun, and it seemed to sum up the paradoxical nature of her music – a mix of high and low art, sacred and profane, precise notation and free improvisation.
