A Mesmerizing, Cross-Cultural Mashup: Meklit Performs at The Loft

Meklit’s music has taken her to places near and far including appearances at Bumbershoot Music Festival, South By South West, and Monterey Jazz Festival. Plans are underway for an east coast tour next season to present concerts and master classes for The Nile River Project, an endeavor loosely based on The Silk Road Project. Meklit and her partner (Egyptian ethnomusicologist Mina Girgis) traveled up the Nile bringing together musicians from the Nile cultures to play and record music—and to tour down the river and its source lakes on a boat made of recycled water bottles.

Her show at the Music Hall Loft will showcase the blues and jazz sound her fans love. (It is NOT the Nile Project.). I was able to connect with her in anticipation of her arrival. Below is our conversation:

T.L: What was the soundtrack of your childhood? What was the music you were exposed to when you were growing up?

Meklit: I had a very eclectic childhood soundtrack. Everything from Prince and Michael Jackson on the radio, to Aster Aweke and Ethiopian classics being played in the tape deck of our old car.

T.L.: What inspires your songwriting? Tell us a bit about your process.

Meklit: My songwriting is inspired by the incredibly various pieces of life. Everything from a memory of childhood, to a chance encounter, to the universal feeling of being an outsider, to the richness of the simple fact of being alive. A song can be anything. You can find a song in any experience. My process is also variable. Sometimes I get a melody in my head and go from there. Other times the idea develops slowly over years before it makes its way into sound and form. Or, the song sometimes arrives in its full clothes right away. You never know and you must always leave room for surprises.

T.L: Tell us how you got involved in the Nile River project and what you expect from the results?

Meklit: The Nile project was cofounded by myself and Egyptian ethnomusicologist Mina Girgis. We started the project from a simple cultural curiosity—because I am from Ethiopia and Mina is from from Egypt, our cultures did not know each other; yet what powerful music we both have! And we share this great river, and often had tension over how we should use it. We realized that music had an incredible capacity for creating empathy, and musicians could create a greater cross-cultural understanding that we hoped could directly benefit people in the region. We believe that music can play a part in knitting the region together in a more holistic way. It’s been a great journey! The goal is a more sustainable Nile basin. But that’s really about the people knowing one another better, and all the healthy interactions that can come from that.

T.L: How did you connect with the musical scene in the various places that you visited as you traveled up the Nile?

Meklit: Mina and I went on our scout trip in May and June 2012. I, of course, had many connections in Ethiopia. Mina had many in Egypt. I had also performed many times in Nairobi Kenya and knew lots of folks there. Many people don’t know that Kenya is part of the Nile basin. It is. There are 11 countries on the Nile! On our scout trips the initial musicians we knew introduced us to more and more amazing artists. The process was completed by our musical director Miles Jay, who did extensive research and connected us with beautiful musicians from Uganda and Rwanda.

T.L: How has this experience influenced or changed your writing and music style?

Meklit: The title track of my upcoming release on Six Degrees records was written directly from this experience. It is based on a Sudanese five count rhythm called the camel walk, which I learned from the beautiful musician Ahmed Saeed at the Nile project residency. Actually I juxtaposed that rhythm with a Radiohead inspired five count that I learned a few months after the residency and the tune came from those two rhythms in conversation with one another. I love to mix things up!

T.L: What can we look forward to in January? Who will be traveling with you to Portsmouth? Tell us about the other band members.

Meklit: I’m traveling with incredible musicians. Sam Bevan on upright bass, Darren Johnston on trumpet, and Lorca Hart on the drum kit. We’ve all been digging in deep with these tunes over the course of the year and this band was an integral part of doing the arrangements that will appear on my upcoming album. They are all composers and bandleaders in their own right. Together we have a lot of fun! They are all well versed in the jazz tradition, but are also experimentalists at heart. And they love a solid groove. So you’ll find our live show sometimes swinging, sometimes rocking, sometimes making you want to dance, and sometimes inviting you to listen quietly. We pride ourselves on the broad range, the arc, from the light and fun, to the deep and underground. About two thirds of my set is in English and about a third is not. I sing in Amharic. I also sing a bit in French and sometimes in Portuguese. It’s all there!

For me the live show is everything. It’s all about the interaction with the audience, and bringing joy to a room. In the concert hall, we’re all in that joy place together. That’s what I live for.