Ethiopian composer and piano-playing nun, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, died last week at the age of 99. ✍️ Read about her extraordinary life, which included being a trailblazer for women's equality.
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, the composer and piano-playing nun who died this week at the age of 99, had an extraordinary life, which included being a trailblazer for women's equality and walking barefoot for a decade in the isolated mountains of northern Ethiopia.It sometimes feels like being tossed around in a small boat at sea, constantly off balance, with little to hold on to. The time signature appears to shift and the scale drifts in and out of familiarity.
Most of her important musical works - recognisable in their complexity and apparent effortlessness - came in the 1960s and 1970s. Her given name was Yewubdar - Amharic for "the most beautiful one"- a name she used until she was ordained as a nun at the age of 21.As a child she was sent to Switzerland with her sister - the first Ethiopian girls to have been sent abroad for education. It was in a Swiss boarding school that she first encountered Western classical music and at the age of eight began playing violin and the piano.
After five years of occupation, the Italians left Ethiopia and Emahoy returned home where she began work at the ministry of foreign affairs - the first female secretary there. And she drove cars - a rarity for a woman - when the majority of Ethiopians used a horse and cart for travel.
She resumed playing music. She continued to shun the spotlight but her compositions took off around this time.After 10 years in a monastery in northern Ethiopia, Emahoy returned to the piano