Tezeta is usually translated as nostalgia, but that undersells it. It is a mode, a scale and a mood at once — Ethiopian music's word for the ache of remembering. Getachew Kassa recorded the version most people mean when they say it.
He was born on 6 September 1944 in Addis Ababa. He played accordion, saxophone and percussion, and he sang. Through the sixties and seventies he worked the Addis club circuit — Sombrino, Axum Hall — and moved through the era's great bands: the Fetan Band, the Sehebelles, the Venus Band, and the Walias Band alongside Hailu Mergia and Girma Bèyènè.
Slow and fast
His two Tezeta recordings, one slow and one fast, both appear on Éthiopiques Vol. 10. Taking the same lament and playing it at two tempos was not a gimmick. The slow one is grief you sit inside. The fast one is grief you dance out. Ethiopian music has always understood that these are the same feeling.
Beyond Tezeta: Addis Ababa, Tiz Balegn Gize, Yekereme Fikir, Bertucan nesh lomi, Bichayan Tekze, Agere Tizitash.
2024
He died on 21 February 2024 in Addis Ababa, aged 79, after being hospitalised at Yekatit 12. He was cremated at Holy Trinity Cathedral. He had been working, in one form or another, for six decades.
Why we put him on a shirt
Because the Éthiopiques series made this music famous abroad while the musicians themselves stayed largely anonymous outside Ethiopia. Putting a name and a face on a shirt is a small correction.
The Getachew Kassa Tribute Tee is part of our Ethiopian Music Legends collection — printed to order in the US, free US shipping over $50.