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.
Cool! What was the name of the band/group?
Posted by: Garth Webb | January 26, 2010 at 04:21 PM