Photo courtesy of Alexa Treviño
MEKlit
Meklit Hadero is an award winning Ethiopian-American vocalist/composer and former refugee.
Her music has been featured by the New York Times, BBC, NPR and more. Meklit is a NatGeo
Explorer, TED Sr. Fellow, and former Artist-in-Residence at Harvard. She has been
commissioned to create music by Lincoln Center, and collaborated with Kronos Quartet, Andrew
Bird and Preservation Hall Jazz Band. She is host of Movement, a new radio series, podcast
and live show exploring the intersection of migration and music, which airs as a nationally
syndicated feature on PRX's The World to 2.5 million monthly listeners.
PROJECTS
MOVEMENT Live
A new performance work co-commissioned by the Cultural Arts Center, Movement LIVE combines the energy of a concert with the intimacy of storytelling. It’s The Moth meets a full on concert experience! The performance is led by Ethiopian-American musician and cultural strategist Meklit Hadero, who, for this show, is joined by two other artists who share their own migration stories – artists from Montgomery County and the DMV. This project lives at the crossroads of migration and music, exploring a world in motion, redefining identity and what it takes to call a place home. Directed by acclaimed Indian theater director Sophiyaa Nayar, Movement LIVE hits listeners at the level of the hips, the heart, and the head.
Movement LIVE is co-commissioned by the Cultural Arts Center at Montgomery College (Takoma Park/Silver Spring, MD), Stanford Live, Meany Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Washington (Seattle), Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, and Arizona State University, Gammage.
Meklit (The Band)
Meklit Haderi an Ethiopian-American vocalist, songwriter, composer and former refugee, known for her electric stage presence, innovative sound and vibrant cultural activism. Meklit’s musical performances have taken her to renowned stages across four continents. Her last album topped world music charts across the US and Europe, and was named amongst the best of the year by Bandcamp and The Sunday Times UK. Most meaningfully to her, Meklit is a star in her home country of Ethiopia, after the music video for her song Kemekem and her TED Talk went viral there, the latter garnering over 1.3 million views. Her band actively features Kibrom Birhane (keyboardist / Ethiopian multi-instrumentalist), Howard Wiley (saxophonist), Colin Douglas (drummer), Sem Bevan (bassist), and Marco Peris (percussionist and creative strategist). In addition to songwriter, vocalist, and bandleader, Meklit often performs with the krar – a traditional Ethiopian lyre-harp.