Bridging Cultures Through Art: A Harlem Moment with Tesfaye Tessema

By Tseday Alehegn

Above: Tseday Alehegn during her walks through Harlem with Tesfaye Tessema

Before arriving at Artist Tesfaye’s studio in Harlem, his home of twenty years, we took a tour of historic areas where Ethiopian and African-American ties runs deep and undisturbed. We traversed slowly and observantly across Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, named after the fiery pastor of Harlem’s legendary Abyssinian Baptist Church, and walked through African Square, lined with colorful West African vendors and stores. Continuing our promenade towards Lenox Avenue, we spotted an Ethiopian-owned cafe called Settepani, a popular hangout for Harlem’s young elite. As we strolled by Jackie Robinson’s Park, a young African American man, recognizing our Ethiopian ancestry, smiled and greeted us with a hearty “Tenastelegn!”

Above: Top left, Jackie Robinson’s Park; Middle Right, Harlem’s legendary Abyssinian Baptist Church. Photos by Tseday Alehegn

Walking through Harlem with Tess (as he is known in Harlem), two things become quickly evident: The first being that this neighborhood has, as the artist tells us, “a feeling of home.” And the latter, that his love for this community fuels his art.

Above: Tesfaye Tessema in Brooklyn, New York.  Photo by Liben Eabisa

One of his recent exhibitions at Skoto Gallery in New York (one of the first galleries to specialize in contemporary African Art in the United States), was entitled Addis Improvisations: Art from Harlem. This series is an afrocentric, jazzy-expression of joint heritage.

   

Above: Left, Addis Improvisation III, 2004, acrylic on canvas, 72×54 inches. Right, Addis Improvisation I, 2004, acrylic on canvas, 72″x39″. Photos courtesy of Skoto Gallery.

Tesfaye’s journey to Harlem can be traced back to his early high school days, when he was a student at Menelik High School in Addis Ababa. On one particular day, his class was excused and students were asked to attend a special gathering at the National Theatre. “We were told that an important person from Harlem had arrived, and we saw several men dressed in fancy suits setting up their musical instruments on stage. Their leader was called Duke Ellington,” he recalls. The young Tesfaye was mesmerized as the concert began with Ellington’s famous “A-Train” composition. This extraordinary opportunity to listen to Ellington play jazz remained etched in Tesfaye’s mind, his first introduction to jazz and to Harlem.

Many years later, after arriving in Washington, D.C. to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts at
Howard University, he developed lasting friendships within the African-American community, and rekindled his passion for Harlem. After completing his art studies, Tesfaye moved to Harlem. He now lives in the same building where Duke Ellington once resided. “I feel at home here,” he says. “I tell my African-American friends that, just as they look for their roots, I search for my branches. Together we form a tree.”

Harlem, and jazz in particular, have profoundly impacted Tesfaye’s art. Speaking about his career as an artist, he says, “My art lately is an improvisation. I consider myself a jazz  painter. I play jazz with my brush.”

  

Above: Left, 155th/Amsterdam Avenue II, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 24″x16″. Right, Addis Improvisation V, 2004, acrylic on canvas, 72″x54″.  Photos courtesy of Skoto Gallery.

Art itself had also been an integral part of Tesfaye’s childhood experience. “I’ve known art since I knew myself,” he says. “While other children played together, I grew up in a household with no other children, so art became my game. I played art. I drew on walls with charcoal, and I looked around for natural objects to create color – green from leaves and yellow from mustard,” he shares. “Whenever I accompanied my mother to church, I used to stare at the paintings on the walls during prayers. To me, this art was able to express spiritual concepts that are not as easily expressed through words.” After attending Menelik school, Tesfaye longed to enter the National Fine Arts School — conveniently located right next door. He was accepted and commenced formal studies in art there before going on to pursue graduate studies at Howard.

Tesfaye Tessema is not only a master painter but also a master print maker and a muralist. He also uses etching, lithography, and mixed media. His art has been collected by prestigious institutions, such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the United Nations in New York City. Alongside the works of famous African-American artists such as Romare Bearden, Tesfaye Tessema’s paintings are prominently featured in the Schomburg Center’s publication Black New York Artists of the 20th Century. The United Nations transformed one of his paintings into a stamp that  raised over $300,000 for famine relief in Ethiopia. He was also commissioned to paint a mural by the Museum of African Arts (the Smithsonian) on Capitol Hill. Tesfaye stands as one of the only contemporary Ethiopian artists to display his artwork at established institutions like the Guggenheim Museum in New York. His art has been exhibited at various universities throughout the U.S. as well as internationally in France,Germany, England, Japan, and many other countries.

Above: Addis Improvisation IV, 2004, acrylic on canvas, 56″x54″. Photo courtesy of Skoto Gallery.

Throughout his career, Tesfaye has emphasized his appreciation for public art. “I think people have the right to claim my art,” he says, seeing art as his service to individuals and contribution to the public in general. He uses the sights and sounds of his two communities, Ethiopian and African-American, to make art that positively reinforces their harmony.

“I would really like the world to know that all of us are artists,” he says. “There are no special people made to be artists. What comes out on the canvas is what we’ve all taken in from our environment, expressed through our own personal interpretation.”

A Harlem moment with Tesfaye teaches us to appreciate not only the art but also the artist.

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About the Author: Tseday Alehegn is the Editor-in-Chief of Tadias Magazine. Tseday is a graduate of Stanford University (both B.A. & M.A.). In addition to her responsibilities at Tadias, she is also a Doctoral student at Columbia University.

Outside with the Insider: Music Manager Addis Gessesse

By Mikael Awake

Above: Addis Gessesse at home (Photo by Ayda Grima for Tadias Magazine)

Hanna Gessesse points to a photograph in one of her father’s albums. The photograph was taken two years ago in Addis Ababa and shows the main stage of the Africa Unite concert, which was the brainchild of her father, Addis. On the giant backdrop behind the stage hangs a larger-thanlife mural of a legendary reggae singer.

 

“That’s Bob Marley,” says Hanna. At three years old, Hanna is like most children her age. She complains when a certain reporter steals her father for an interview in their backyard. “I want to go with you, Daddy,” she cries. “Daddy, pleeeeease!”

 

But in being able to recognize Bob Marley’s likeness, even when drawn rather crudely as it was on the backdrop, she is definitely unlike most other toddlers her age. But perhaps it’s not so surprising to those who know her father, Addis Gessesse – music manager of Rita Marley and most of the Marley family and man behind the landmark Africa Unite concert. The concert, and the other month-long series of events, saw half-a-million people crowd the streets of Addis Ababa to watch the Marley Family, the I-Threes, Baaba Maal, and Angelique Kidjo perform in celebration of Bob Marley’s 60th Birthday.

 

One of the biggest and most starstudded African concerts the continent has ever seen started out, six years ago, as little more than a vague dream in the mind of Addis Gessesse.

 

Addis Gessesse took a long and winding road through the music business, a road that included as much struggle as good fortune. A road that begins with his life as a struggling immigrant student from Ethiopia and shepherd of his younger brothers in Chicago, then to life as an established entity in Jamaica and New York, working with acts like Ziggy Marley and Earth, Wind, and Fire, and then full-circle back to the extravagant concert in Addis Ababa two years ago.

 

That same long and winding road eventually leads down a quiet, tree-lined street in the residential neighborhoods of Jersey City, New Jersey – to a big, musty, old-fashioned Victorian house. There is ivy growing up the windows in the front and a small, weedy yard in the back. Addis is short, stocky and has a moustache. He wears clothes typical of an unassuming father from the suburbs, though with a somewhat boyish flair: crisp Nike running shoes, khaki shorts, and an open flannel shirt exposing a thin gold chain underneath.

 

Over three decades ago, Addis left behind his family and his three brothers to attend college in the United States. Not long after he graduated with a degree in management, his brothers, who happened to be musicians, followed him and began life anew in Chicago.

 

“Their arrival here totally changed my whole life,” says Addis. His voice is soft, calm. “Because I loved my brothers and I was doing everything to make them successful in this country. While doing that, I got immersed in their music.”

 

With a degree in management still fresh in his pocket, Addis made the decision that changed the course of his professional and personal life: to devote himself to his brothers and their music. “My brothers really have a lot to do with it,” he says.

 

The group that his brothers formed was called Dallol. Addis managed the group, which along with his brothers included a few of their friends from Addis Ababa University, and though they started out playing traditional Ethiopian music, soon after moving to Chicago and coming into contact with different styles, they made the transition towards reggae. With the support of a professor at Northwestern University, a fellow Ethiopian named Abraham Demoz, who acted as a surrogate father to the young men, Addis and his brothers were able to secure a rehearsal space on the campus and cultivate their sound.

 

In 1982, while steadily carving out a name for themselves in Chicago, Dallol got the break that they had been waiting for, an invitation from Rita Marley to play in Jamaica. Acting as their manager, Addis brought the group to Kingston where they played at the first Bob Marley birthday celebration after the reggae superstar’s death in 1981. It was in Jamaica that his working relationship with Rita and the Marley family began.

 

“At the time Rita gave us everything that we needed, including financial support and she was very excited for us as Ethiopians to come and perform in Jamaica. At the time she was still grieving the death of her husband and she felt we became a sort of support for her.”

 

Still, as significant as his contribution was to Rita’s life at the time, Addis cannot compare it with the influence Rita has had on his. “I owe a lot to that woman. She was very instrumental in helping me make music as a career. Very few people do that for you.”

 

Addis spent a year in Jamaica in the early eighties, which he remembers with much fondness. He lived down the street from what many consider the Mecca of reggae music, Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong headquarters at 56 Hope Road. This was back in the days when the Wailers were still making music and Ziggy had yet to finish high school. Addis would go on, in the following years, to organize with Rita the world tour for Bob Marley’s posthumous Legend album. The tour included the Wailers and the I-Three’s and helped spur sales of the album, which to this day remains one of the bestselling albums of all time.

 

From 1988 to 1991, Dallol was the official band for Ziggy Marley. The group, Addis makes it a point to remind me, has the distinction of being the first band of Ethiopian musicians to reach platinum record sales with Conscious Party (1988), as well as a gold record with Ziggy’s follow- up album, One Bright Day (1989).

 

After the world tours and a brief stint in Los Angeles, where he worked with Earth, Wind, and Fire, Addis returned with his brothers to Chicago, but his professional drive and his desire to travel had not died with the tours. “As we went along, Dallol wanted to do their own thing and I didn’t want to stay in Chicago,” he says. “So I moved to New York.”

 

“You know we all go in our own little phases of doing things,” he continued. “And my project became more or less, like, anything higher level, anything big.” What followed was a project called Race Against Racism, a series of largescale concerts, along the lines of Africa Unite, which took place in Europe and drew half a million people to concerts in Paris, Rome and Milan.

 

For Addis, who remains humble about his success, finding someone influential to believe in you is the key ingredient (along with discipline, he adds) to a successful career in music – though the insight might very well apply to any number of industries. Just as Rita Marley gave him his start in the business all those years ago, Addis is intent on discovering new, young talent. In particular, he wants to bring undiscovered Ethiopian musicians out of the tight orbit of the Ethiopian community into the larger universe of world music.

 

Besides being a lifelong friend of the Marley family and manager of Ziggy, Rita, and Stephen, Addis is the man behind the careers of some of the biggest names in contemporary Ethiopian music. He discovered Teddy Afro, who is still one of Addis’s clients. “Teddy is my major project right now,” he says, as a U.S. tour and record release are underway.

 

His New York-based artist management firm, Addis Management, has helped launch the careers of some of the biggest names in Ethiopian pop. His interest in bringing Ethiopian music to a larger arena started with a chance encounter that took place in the backyard of his quiet New Jersey home. Midway through reciting his impressive list of clients, Addis stops: “And then this young lady came into the picture.” The “young lady” he is talking about is Palm recording artist, Gigi.

 

“Gigi came to me, to this house. Some guys brought her in. I didn’t know who the hell she was and I wasn’t too crazy about anything at the time, because I was doing a lot of things. She sat down out here and she started singing. And I saw talent.”

 

It would be only a matter of time before he took hold the reins of her career, first advising her to move to New York (she was living in San Francisco at the time) and then introducing her to his network of music industry contacts.

 

“I said to Gigi, ‘I don’t want to brag about who I know or what I can do for you, but I can put you on the map.’” He eventually introduced the young singer to Chris Blackwell, and Blackwell, the innovator who founded Island Records and guided the careers of artists like Bob Marley & The Wailers, U2, and Melissa Etheridge, signed Gigi to a multi-album deal with his Palm record label. (Through Addis, Blackwell also signed Teddy Afro to a similar deal, which is currently in the works.)

 

While we talked, he kept his cell phone at arms length. At any moment, he could get the call that would send him to Ethiopia to attend to one of his numerous business ventures. In recent years, Addis has not limited himself to managing artists and arranging concerts overseas. His portfolio is quite diverse, with a list of obligations that range from a reggae club in Chicago, which he opened with his brothers several years ago, to a farm in the Ethiopian countryside, to an ambitious school building project in the villages of Ethiopia through the One Love Africa Foundation.

 

Part of the appeal of throwing a concert like Africa Unite in his homeland was the positive exposure it would give to Ethiopia. Says Addis, “Nothing positive comes out of that country, and we wanted to change that. And I think with our own little contribution we achieved that. To where people started saying, things can be worked out in Ethiopia, things can work in Ethiopia.

 

“When you have half a million people in one location for a concert no matter which country you’re in, from the most advanced nation to the worst voodoo society on earth, there’s always going to be an incident. But everybody came, enjoyed the music, and went back home without a slight incident. This to me shows the pride that I have in my culture. You cannot find that anywhere.”

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About the Author: Mik Awake was born in Boston and grew up in Atlanta. In 2003 he graduated from Columbia University where he was a staff writer for the Daily Spectator.  He lives in Harlem.