Tikur Sew

Teddy Afro's 2005 album Yasteseryal arrived during the tense months around Ethiopia's general election, and its title track, which criticised government corruption, was one of four songs banned from the country's media. In December 2006 he was arrested over an alleged hit-and-run, sentenced to six years and released for good behaviour in August 2009. His first album after prison, in April 2012, looked back more than a century for its subject. The title, "Tikur Sew", means black man, and the song opens the album as a celebration of Ethiopian sovereignty at the Battle of Adwa, where on 1 March 1896 the army of Emperor Menelik II decisively defeated an Italian colonial force trying to impose a protectorate. Abegazu Kibrework worked on the composition at Kebena Studios. The black-and-white video, directed by Tamrat Mekonnen with some 400 actors, restages the battle with Menelik and his generals, and by its producers' account it was one of the most expensive videos ever made in Ethiopia. Not everyone was convinced: it drew criticism for inaccuracies in its portrayal of Ras Makonnen. The album was a huge seller, its producer saying markets needed 500,000 CDs and 200,000 cassettes, and the song outlived any debate. It is now played every year on 2 March for Adwa Victory Day, and in 2020 Teddy Afro drew a record crowd to Meskel Square in Addis Ababa for a concert built around Adwa. A singer whose songs the state had once banned ended up writing one of the anthems of national memory.