Nefasha Ayer, loosely translated from Amharic as “the wind that travels”, explores a transcontinental odyssey of multiple characters who find themselves caught between national identities, cultures, and politics. The project joins together the talented song-writing capacity of Meklit Hadero with guitarist/composer-arranger, Todd Brown, South-Indian Carnatic Jazz composer/saxophonist, Prasant Radhakrishnan, drummer/tablaist, Sameer Gupta, composer/bassist/flautist, Eliyahu Sills, and Ethiopian born hip-hop artist, Gabriel Teodros. Nefasha Ayer weaves together Ethiopian and South Indian melodies/rhythms against a varying backdrop of North American jazz, while Hadero’s voice and song, as the wind that travels, serve as the narrator.
Through its tones and colors, poetic texts and trans-cultural melodic scores, Nefasha Ayer joins the continents of Africa, South Asia, and America to explore the most essential and universal qualities shared among individuals worldwide whose identity no longer fits within the boundaries of one country, culture, or tradition. Whereas one would expect the content of such a project to focus on the social/cultural context of its characters, Nefasha Ayer builds on the internal: the subjective yet universal human desire for home. For these characters, “home” is no longer an external place – for some it never was. Home has taken shape instead as a longing within. This is “the space of in-between.”
As Hadero states,
"When growing up in Brooklyn, my mother would refer to Ethiopia simply as “back home.” Years later, during our first trip to the Horn of Africa, I witnessed her using the very same words to describe the United States, which struck me profoundly. It became instantly clear that there was, in fact, no such place as “back home.” Rather, it was a reference to an in-between, heavy with nostalgia and fluid enough to change from moment to moment, as she herself was capable of doing."
The lyrical content, written both in Amharic and English, follows the story of five characters, each expressing a different part of the story of “in-between”: nostalgia, exile, return, the moment of break-through, and, finally, revealing to others what has been learned. In each song, the wind, which does not belong to any nation, is ever-present as the narrator or a character, constantly calling the listener to move from the external world, through the songs, and into the internal landscape that ultimately grounds the music.
Although there are innumerable works, in almost every discipline, that address the interface of racial and/or cultural groups, immigration, etc, Nefasha Ayer's central focus brings to life a deceptively simple and most elusive quality. Though the stories are told through the lens of Ethiopian musical idioms and language, it is not an Ethiopian story. Rather, Nefasha Ayer explores a living history found universally amongst people of movement, and indeed all human beings, whose life and identity cannot be bound by nation, religion, or cultural tradition. At its heart, Nefasha Ayer - the space of in-between, represents a free-ness from ideological construct and a fluidity of being - moving and livng in constant redefinition.
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