Emahoy Tsegue/Mayam Guėbrou
Jerusalem
Vinyl
Genre: Classical
EAN: 850024931534
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€29,00
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Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam was born as Yewubdar Guèbrou in Addis Ababa, on 12 December 1923, to a wealthy Amhara family. Her given name Yewubdar means the most beautiful one in Amharic. Her father was a mayor of the historical city of Gondar. At the age of six she was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland, where she studied violin. In 1933 she returned to Ethiopia, where she became a civil servant and singer to Haile Selassie.
During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1937), she and her family were prisoners of war and were sent by the Italians to the prison camp on the Italian island of Asinara and later to Mercogliano, near Naples. After the war, Yewubdar studied under the Polish-Jewish violinist, Alexander Kontorowicz, in Cairo. Kontorowicz and Yewubdar returned to Ethiopia, where Kontorowicz was appointed musical director of the band of the Imperial Body Guard. Yewubdar was employed as an administrative assistant. She was fluent in seven languages. When she was 21, Yewubdar became a nun and spent a decade living in a hilltop monastery in Ethiopia, taking the title Emahoy and the religious name Tsegué-Maryam. “I took off my shoes and went barefoot for 10 years. No shoes, no music, just prayer.”
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