AFRICA Ethiopia

During this week of music class All Around This World travels to the ancient land of Ethiopia, home of injera and spaghetti, Orthodox Christians, Rastafarians and Jews, coffee and lots of it, difficult, prolonged famine, difficult, prolonged war, and perhaps even the Ark of the Covenant. 

Ethiopia is a culturally vibrant country with phenomenal food, generous people and the benefit of a couple thousand years of political independence.

In class we very much enjoy Ethiopian dancing. Unlike dancers most everywhere else in the world, who employ all their limbs to tell stories and convey emotion,  when members of the Ethiopia’s Amhara  ethnic group dance they generally focus on their shoulders. Their primary dance is called the Eskista, a term that even means “dancing shoulders” in Amharic.