Meklit Hadero
Singer, Musician, Songwriter
Singer, Musician, Songwriter
Ive always felt at home with movement, murmurs Meklit Hadero in the same gentle voice with which she traces her songs supple melodies. All of us are made of many places. And she should know: Born in Ethiopia, raised in the U.S. and nurtured by San Franciscos richly diverse arts scene, this acclaimed singer embodies worlds. Joining her soul-filled phrasing to a songwriters craft, her musics influences range wide from the jazz and soul favorites she grew up on; to the hip-hop and art-rock she loves; to folk traditions from the Americas and her forebears East African home. But this singular artists sound, drawn of multitudes, is hers alone.
Emerging from her adopted hometown of San Francisco, Meklit erupted to national notice with the 2010 release of On a Day Like this on Porto Franco Records. Hailed by Filter magazine for [combining] New York jazz with West Coast folk and African flourishes, all bound together by Haderos beguiling voice, her full-length debut which also garnered feature-stories on its maker from NPR, PBS and National Geographic brought Meklits music to a whole new audience. It also announced the arrival, as the San Francisco Chronicle has put it, of an artistic giant in the early stages.
The journey that brought Meklit to this stage included many stops. Born in Ethiopia in the early 1980s, she grew up in Iowa, New York, and Florida. After studying political science at Yale, she moved to San Francisco and became immersed in the citys thriving arts scene. She sings of fragility, hope and self-empowerment, and exudes all three, wrote a Chronicle reporter after witnessing an early performance in the citys Mission District. Whats irresistible, above all, is her cradling, sensuous, gentle sound. She is stunning. She hasnt looked back.
Named a TED Global Fellow in 2009, Meklit has served as an artist-in-residence at New York University, the De Young Museum, and the Red Poppy Art House. Meklit has also completed musical commissions for the San Francisco Foundation and for theatrical productions staged by Brava! For Women in the Arts. She is the founder of the Arba Minch Collective, a group of Ethiopian artists in diaspora devoted to nurturing ties to their homeland through collaborating with both traditional and contemporary artists there.
Now touring in support of her debut album while nurturing plans for her next, along with numerous side-projects, Meklit is gracing renowned festivals and concert-halls worldwide. Most at home not in one place but many, shes an artist leaping from stage to stage before our eyes.
-Joshua Jelly Schapiro
You may not have heard Meklit Haderos music before, but once you do, itll be tough to forget. Haderos sound is a unique blend of jazz, Ethiopia, the San Francisco art scene and visceral poetry; it paints pictures in your head as you listen.
One of our favorite new releases of 2010
Meklit Hadero combines N.Y. jazz with West Coast folk and African flourishes, all bound together by Haderos beguiling voice, which is part sunshine and part cloudy day.
Soulful, tremulous and strangely cinematic, Haderos voice will implant scenes in your mind a softly lit supperclub, a Brooklyn stoop, a sun-baked road. Close your eyes, listen and dream.
This album has been on constant rotation, with every spin revealing something fresh and addictive.
[Meklit] is an artistic giant in the early stages. She sings of fragility, hope and self-empowerment, and exudes all three. Whats irresistible, above all, is her cradling, sensuous, gentle sound. She is stunning.
Haderos voice and songwriting are irresistible and become even more compelling with repeat listening.
The perfect triangle of influences comes together on this unforgettable debut. Born in Ethiopia, Meklit Hadero has the lilting grace of African music in everything she sings, and there is the timelessness of that ancient land in the way Hadero puts deep beauty in these songs.
Meklit Haderos debut album is one of those rare gems you hope to find every once in a while. Each song is breathtakingly perfect, and each one presents a new musical twist on what singer-songwriter Hadero is capable of.
Its easy to tell that Meklit Hadero is a singer, just by listening to the soft susurrations of her speaking voice. She could talk about anything and it would somehow sound private and intimate. Her singing follows suit, with its dense phrasing and lazy vibratos. Hadero is relatively new to the stage, but shes already generated a huge cult of adoration in the past five years.
Theres a maturity to Haderos debut album, On a Day Like This that belies her inexperience. She articulates words in weird, interesting ways to give them shape cloud sounds like clood and up sounds like ooom. There are no hard consonants or sharp vowels, and all the lyrics flow along with a bluesy lilt. They could almost be scraps from a spoken-word poem: Green, green, green, everywhere, she sings in Under, accenting each green a slightly different way (greeen, greenn, grreen). The song is a lullaby and love ballad. It could almost be a hymn.
Hadero wrote or co-wrote all but two of the ten tracks on On a Day, and they all have a definitive style: spare chords, murky harmonies, an implied rise but no bridge. Her band is fantastic, buoyed by such local stars as drummer Jeff Marrs, bassists Devin Hoff and Marcus Shelby, trumpeter Darren Johnston, and saxophonist David Boyce who, in a surprising twist, plays bass clarinet for most of this album. But its Haderos singing style that really sets the mood, and imbues each line with meaning.