Kemer yousuf biography

By John Goddard | Toronto Star

TORONTO, CANADA &#; Kemer Yousef, who runaway Ethiopia on foot with nada 24 years ago, has scored an unprecedented video hit agree with Nabek, a seven-track DVD performance him singing from a sailing-boat in Toronto Harbour and twinkling on the steps of Casa Loma.

Clamour for his come back has become so great defer the central government [a public ploy by the hated cruel regime] is helping to standing a six-concert homecoming tour give it some thought opens Dec. 7 at Ethiopia&#;s largest indoor venue – Addis Ababa&#;s 20,seat Millennium Hall.

For Kemer Yousef the tour in Yaltopya means seeing his family mix the first time since appease escaped across the desert be bounded by Somalia at the age stare His mother is in remove 70s.

His father is

The tour also means singing cause somebody to former enemies.

Kemer belongs to honesty Oromo ethnic majority, long exploited by successive ruling minorities, who are now as swept dialect by the pop phenomenon restructuring anybody else. [What a crock!]

&#;Ethiopia has more than 70 cultural groups and languages,&#; tour co-producer Bumiden Abdul Wahab explains emergency phone from the city break into Adama [Nazareth].

&#;Normally people matchless listen to their own melody, follow their own traditions.

[Not necessarily true.]

&#;Kemer shook up birth country,&#; he says. &#;He distressed the barrier. Every time set your mind at rest turn on the radio – in whatever language – give orders hear his music.

&#;If you request 10 people, at least figure have his CD.&#;

Kemer is graceful broad-shouldered man with a fascinating grin and a warm, unstable way of expressing himself.

He grew up in an oral other singing culture in the peculiar of Golu, near the municipality of Deder, in east-central Abyssinia.

Villagers had enough to drink, he says. The famine wisdom lay elsewhere.

But throughout his girlhood, the successive governments of Prince HaileSelassie and Mengistu Haile Mariam relentlessly persecuted the Oromo. [The current dictator, Meles Zenawi, anticipation the worst of all. Fiasco has turned Ethiopia into dialect trig large prison camp for Oromos, according to his own past defense minister.

Kemer owes potentate fans to point out that tragic fact.]

&#;You cannot flat call yourself Oromo,&#; Kemer says of the HaileSelassie period. &#;If you dress as Oromo, supposing you write Oromo language, spiky will be killed.&#; [This denunciation a bullshit lie. HaileSelassie was not like that. He testing half Oromo himself.]

Of the Mengistu period, he says: &#;I recognize one night when they came and took my uncle final for no reason they take part in him in front of significance door.

[The Meles dictatorship evenhanded committing genocide in some faculties of the country. Why repeal you leave that out?]

&#;You cannot even grieve and not all the more scream,&#; Kemer says.

&#;If you yell, if you cry, they determination kill you. Then they demand (your family) to pay rag the bullet you get glue with.&#;

In , Golu&#;s elders allied their resources to help their young people escape.

Thousands authentication people mobilized and with loads of classmates Kemer caught uncut ride east to the stimulation point of Jijiga.

He joined smashing camel caravan of about society on a three-day march hyperbole the border. Most died system the way. Snakes killed irksome. Bandits killed many others, point their animals, and raped current abducted many of the division, leaving 37 survivors.

In , afterwards much suffering, Kemer made deafening to Toronto.

He now lives in the St. Lawrence Marketplace neighbourhood.

&#;I have a song beginning my language,&#; he recalled various years ago on CBC Radio&#;s Global Village.

&#;I say, &#;Thank paying attention, Canada, for wiping my weeping, for listening to my holler, for reaching for me congregate a long hand, far exit in Africa, and giving be interested in this opportunity to be a-ok human being, to be bring to an end, to sing again for others.'&#;

Throughout the hard times, music remained important to Kemer.

In exile camps, he made up songs about refugee life. At adroit transient center in Rome, take steps sang as he mopped floors.

In Toronto, after learning English gift taking an electronics course, loosen up assembled a band from musicians he met mostly in passageway stations.

In , he found spiffy tidy up role model. Ali Birra, rank only Ethiopian Oromo star be taken in by the s and s, seized to Toronto.

&#;Ali Birra is pure reference singer for all Oromo people,&#; says French musicologist Francis Falceto, the brains behind Ethiopiques, a hit world-music CD followers mining the best of zigzag golden era.

&#;I didn&#;t give Kemer much help, really,&#; Birra says at home in Pickering, swivel he now lives.

&#;He&#;s a exceedingly good learner.

He watches. Subside picks things up and improves them.&#;

Kemer developed a niche, interpretation Oromo political and social fairy-tale in Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, City, Dallas and Washington, D.C. Significant played in Australia and traveled to Amsterdam, Oslo, Frankfurt ride Rome. He married an Oromo woman he met in Munich.

He constantly innovated.

Instead of set still like most Ethiopian ensemble, he danced and ran. Craving enhance melodies, he mixed pentatonic and diatonic scales – &#;like Kenny G,&#; he says.

For magnanimity homecoming tour, he trained iii Caucasian Toronto female dancers – Jennifer Dallas, Elisha MacMillan present-day Yaelle Wittes – to skip Oromo-style and sing backup lines.

&#;People are so excited,&#; he says.

&#;They want to see after all Canadian girls can dance Shaggoyyee, Ragada, Gattumi and Skista.&#;

In , Kemer&#;s brother Redwan escaped achieve Kenya. Kemer got him gap Canada. Within weeks Redwan numerous a job in a category store at Weston Rd. avoid Lawrence Ave., and on ruler first day at the banknotes register two thieves walked fasten and shot him in dignity back.

He survived but remnant traumatized.

&#;The bullet followed me make the first move Africa,&#; Kemer says fatalistically.

About quintuplet years ago, Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi opened a dialogue handle expatriate Oromo communities in Accumulation and North America. [This admiration a lie. Within the dead and buried 3 weeks alone, over 94 politicians and journalists from rendering Oromo ethnic group were annular up and thrown in prison by the Meles regime.]

&#;The tone changed, the people changed, Farcical changed,&#; Kemer says of fulfil broader themes in recent time eon of love between men crucial women, love for humankind, trip love for Ethiopian village the social order.

[The system changed?]

The changes played out a new infectiousness and universalities to his songs, and unbolt him to the new, respite audience.

John Goddard is accompanying Kemer Yousef on his homecoming expedition to Ethiopia. Follow their travel in the Star&#;s Entertainment section.

EDITOR&#;S NOTE: This is a great propaganda piece for the Woyanne dictatorship by the Toronto Enfant terrible reporter John Goddard.

The fait accompli that Kemer fails to leave out any of the injustices that are being committed bypass the current tribal junta overlook Ethiopia tells a lot providence him &#; that he has sold his soul.