''Souvenirs'' is an album by

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

n musician

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou ( Gəʿəz ጽጌ ማርያም ገብሩ; born Yewubdar Gebru, 12 December 1923 – 26 March 2023) was an Ethiopian composer, pianist, and nun.

. Emahoy distributed the tracks on ''Souvenirs'' on homemade

CD-R CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can only be Write once read many, written once and read arbitrarily many times. CD-R discs (CD-Rs) ...

s during her lifetime, and the album was compiled and posthumously reissued by US label

Mississippi Records Mississippi Records is a record store and label. It was founded by Eric Isaacson in 2003 in Portland, Oregon. It also houses a café, equipment repair shop, and the Portland Museum of Modern Art. Brick and mortar store The name Mississippi ...

in February 2024. It is unique among Emahoy's albums for prominently featuring her vocals, sung in

Amharic Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amhara people, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other metropolitan populati ...

Background and release

The tracks on ''Souvenirs'' were written and recorded by Emahoy in Addis Ababa, at the home of her family, in the years 1977–1985. She recorded the vocals by singing into a

boombox A boombox is a transistorized portable music player featuring one or two cassette tape players/recorders and AM/FM radio, generally with a carrying handle. Beginning in the mid-1990s, a CD player was often included. Sound is delivered thro ...

placed on top of the piano while she played. Emahoy sold the tracks from the album on homemade CD-Rs, and they were not widely known in her lifetime. Emahoy died in March 2023 at the age of 99, and the recordings on ''Souvenirs'' were found among boxes of cassette tapes she had left in her cell at the Kidane Mehret Church. Mississippi Records reissued the album on vinyl, CD, and cassette in February 2024.

Themes

On ''Souvenirs'' Emahoy sings about the political turmoil in Ethiopia that followed the

Ethiopian Revolution The Ethiopian Revolution () was a period of civil, police and military upheaval in Ethiopia to protest against the weakened Haile Selassie government. It is generally thought to have begun on 12 January 1974 when Ethiopian soldiers began a rebel ...

in 1974. Emahoy and her family were forbidden from leaving Ethiopia during the

Red Terror The Red Terror () was a campaign of political repression and Mass killing, executions in Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Russia which was carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police ...

that followed the

1974 Ethiopian coup d'état On 12 September 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed by the Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police, and Territorial Army, a Soviet-backed military junta that consequently ruled Ethiopia as the Derg until 28 May 1991. In February 1 ...

. In 1984 Emahoy's mother died and she left Ethiopia, and eventually settled in the Kidane Mehret Church in

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

, where she lived for the rest of her life. In a review for ''

The Quietus ''The Quietus'' is a British online music and pop culture magazine founded by John Doran and Luke Turner. The site is an editorially independent publication led by Doran with a group of freelance journalists and critics. Content ''The Quietu ...

'' Jakub Knera called ''Souvenirs'' "a document of exile and war made by a virtuoso, mesmerising pianist in supposed privacy." ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork or hay fork is an agricultural tool used to pitch loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. It has a long handle and usually two to five thin tines designed to efficiently move such materials. The term is also applie ...

'' wrote that "throughout, Emahoy’s songwriting orients toward melancholic...the music of ''Souvenirs'' underlines Emahoy's pride in the beauty and breadth of life in Ethiopia."

Critical reception

Jim Hickson of ''

Songlines A songline, also called dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) within the animist belief systems of the Aboriginal cultures of Australia. They mark the route followed by localised "creator-beings" in the Dr ...

'' called ''Souvenirs'' a "special, touching album" but said that "this set doesn’t quite give the revelatory, otherworldly experience of Tsege-Mariam’s solo piano works." In a review for ''

'', Eric Torres called the album "a nourishing balm and an essential expansion of her available catalog." ''The Quietus'' wrote that "these compositions differ from anything previously released by the artist. You can hear the birds outside the window as Emahoy performs; it is intimate, you feel as if you are sitting beside her."

Track listing

Personnel

* Reissue produced by Cyrus Moussav * Co-Produced by Thomas Feng * Tape Digitization by Albina Music Trust * Mastering by Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic

References

{{Authority control 2024 compilation albums Mississippi Records albums Compilation albums published posthumously