Dessiepalooza

After returning from a meeting I had in Bahir Dar, I was ready to

relax after about 40 hours of travel by bus in 5 days. I went to the

local souk and a friend there told me about a concert that was being

held in Dessie. Not one to miss out on live music when it is a rarity

(besides local cultural music), I went up to the concert to enjoy

myself.



I did not expect the long line that they had in front of the concert.

I also thought it would be a small concert in a bar somewhere. The

crowd that showed up was huge. It felt like maybe 20,000 people were

there. My town has a total of 151,000 people, so this is an amazing

amount of people. I ended up not bringing a jacket and Dessie gets

cold at night, so I ended up loading up on beer and dancing a lot to

the music to keep warm. I later found out that Akon's wife was born in

Dessie and she was playing host to the concert. As a farenji, I

thought I'd be able to get backstage and say hello, so I went

backstage and they immediately pulled me up on stage to dance with

Rosie (Akon's wife) and some other big Ethiopian artists. I was

surprised by the whole affair, but as the other PC volunteer in my

town later told me, "I bet you liked the attention". I'll admit it

wasn't too miserable.



The whip cream on top was that Rosie (a very attractive woman) ended

up giving me a kiss on the cheek when I left. Oh how I miss live

music.

Comments

[Garth Webb]

Cool! What was the name of the band/group?