Thursday, March 30, 2023
Obituary: Emahoy Tsegué‑Maryam Guèbrou (1923-2023)
By Jim Hickson
Emahoy, an Ethiopian nun renowned for her charity work and a singular piano style only discovered by the wider world when she was in her 70s, has died at the age of 99
Image courtesy of the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Foundation
It’s a rare and beautiful thing to experience an artist whose work is utterly their own, that defies easy comparison or categorisation; to listen to music that one can only meaningfully describe using abstract, effusive terms. That is the music that Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou made when she sat down at her piano.
Her music is a unique style of Ethiopian pianism. It contains depths. The elegant cascades of her piano’s keys call forth memories, histories, influences: Beethoven, Debussy, Art Tatum, Satie, Chopin, Scott Joplin, courtly waltzes, Ethiopian Orthodox chants and folk melodies, the dignified hymns of the giant begena lyre, life’s hardships and joys, her beloved family members, her deep spirituality, her compassion. Her pieces don’t flourish in virtuosity, but precision; masterworks of chiaroscuro, they offer comfort, suspense and surprise. Languid rubato and unexpected turnarounds of tonality make her music drift and flow like heavy frankincense smoke, or a tide, or a waterfall. There is no separating composition from performance, as they are both hers alone.
Emahoy’s life story is just as astonishing. Born Yewubdar Gebru into an important political family in Addis Ababa in 1923, she had a whirlwind of an early life, with time as a schoolgirl in Switzerland, she was a prisoner-of-war in Italy, and a scholar of European classical violin and piano in Egypt. A promising career beckoned, but Yewubdar’s musical life was abruptly halted when Emperor Selassie refused her permission to continue her studies in England. After falling into depression and illness, faith guided her to sneak away to a monastery in the countryside. By the time she was 25, Yewubdar had become a nun of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, taking the title of Emahoy and changing her name to Tsegué-Maryam (her full name is sometimes also spelled as Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru).
It was after taking the veil that she created her singular musical style and composed most of her 150-plus works. But the music has always been just one thread in her life’s work of charity. Upon witnessing the homelessness of young people studying at her church, she dedicated herself to the poor and needy. Whenever she recorded her compositions and released albums, she made sure that all the proceeds went directly to orphanages. After several years of working for the Orthodox church in Jerusalem, Emahoy eventually moved to the Holy City for good in 1984. Living a semi-hermetic life in a monastery, she continued to help the poor in Israel and Ethiopia, and continued to practice piano daily.
It was in these later years that her music started to get the reach and attention it deserved, spearheaded by a compilation of her older recordings as Éthiopiques, Vol. 21 in 2006. The album was a revelation, and gained her fans around the world. Her compositions have been used in various film soundtracks, a documentary about her own life is currently in production, and two more albums of her work are set to be released in 2023 – with all proceeds, as ever, to those in need.
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou died in her 100th year – she would have celebrated her centenary in December. In a review of her latest album, Jerusalem, I wrote that she ‘is a living musical treasure.’ She may no longer be with us, but the treasure of her music will live for a long time to come.
Emahoy's album, Jerusalem, will be reviewed in the May 2023 issue of Songlines (on sale from April 7)
