Local singer/songwriter Meklit Hadero was born in Ethiopia. Mina Girgis, ethnomusicologist and Director of the Bay Area community music center Zambaleta, grew up in Egypt. Over a beer last summer, the two realized that they have something in common other than a love for music: a desire to learn more about each other’s musical culture and a river that connected the countries of their birth.
From there came the Nile Project: a platform to bring together musicians from all of the countries that share the Nile: Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uganda. The plan is to make a record and tour the world with this music. And not only will they tour the world, they will tour the Nile, playing the music for their neighbors along the river. They will also be joined by scientists and local specialists who can share other information about the river and be part of the Ted talks.
The project is in its infant stages and requires a tremendous amount of research: Who are the musicians? What are the songs? What are the logistics of touring the Nile? (There are after all alligators and rapids along the way.)
Meklit and Mina need your help to get to East Africa for the first research trip this spring and are raising 10 thousand dollars on kickstarter to help cover the costs. But more importantly, they want to get the word out about the project.
Watch this video and read my interview with Meklit below to learn more about the Nile Project.
Q: How did this idea come about? Why the Nile?
A: Last August 2011, after months of not seeing each other, Mina and I caught up over beer and chatted about our recent trips to our respective countries of Egypt and Ethiopia. We started talking about the music of each other’s countries and realized that in order to find out the music of your neighbors in Africa, you have to leave the continent. The people have great pride in their own music, but you have to go to Europe or North America to found out about the people that share so much with you.
So we started talking about everything we share, and obviously the Nile came up. The river connects most of East Africa. It’s this thing that we share and keeps us connected as this eco-cultural unit. And it made us think, what does the new Pan-Africanism look like? How do we relate to each other? How do we learn about each other?
While it can be so hard to relate to each other politically and ideologically, it can be so much easier to link culturally and artistically. You can dance to something. And when you are in the musical zone, you don’t need to know what language they’re singing in.
Q: How will you find the musicians?
A: From our individual trips to Egypt and Ethiopia, we have an extensive network of musicians, but negotiating Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda we’ve been doing a lot of research and creating partnerships. That’s part of what we’ll be doing on this first trip that we’re doing the Kickstarter campaign for.
In our research already, we’ve noticed that people recommend the same musicians, so that means that these musicians are seasoned and can tour easily. But we’re also interested in making space for someone who’s never done this before and is an amazing musician.
Q: How will you take all of these musicians on tour?
A: We don’t think we necessarily want to come up with one super group that’s going to tour the world, that’s not realistic, but rather have different musicians participate at different times. The Silk Road project is a great successful model for us except that we won’t be so focused on classical and traditional music. Mina actually worked for the Silk Road project at the Smithsonian, so he has a lot of great connections with them.
Q: What will the recording projects look like?
A: Actually, there are many ways this could go. For example, there’s an instrument in Ethiopia that’s called the krar, a five-string lyre. In the Lake Victoria region of Kenya, there’s an instrument called nyatiti that is virtually the same instrument. It’s also found in Egypt and Sudan. So, one iteration of the Nile Project could be musicians of that instrument playing different rhythms and different songs .
Q: What other ideas do you have as far as the kind of music you’re hoping to record and perform?
A: We don’t want the Nile Project to be only traditional music. We definitely want to involve hip-hop artists because it has become such a huge vehicle for ideas in galvanizing young people.
Q: This is a huge project, $10,000 sounds like just a drop in the bucket.
A: This $10,000 is really about getting us to the Nile to do the initial research. We’ll be doing a lot of other fundraising in terms of foundation grants. This first part of the trip will take place for about three weeks in May 2012. It’s going to be very quick, with only four or so days in each country. We don’t want to make all of our decisions to be made on this one trip, so we’ll most likely go again.
Help Mina and Meklit get to the Nile so that they can begin the research on the ground to get this amazing project moving. Donate to their kickstarter campaign now and spread the word!
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