Meklit Hadero

Biography

* Meklit Hadero is an Ethiopian-born singer, musician, and Resident Artist at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco. Drawing inspiration from Jazz instrumentalists, American songwriters, and Ethiopian vocalists, Meklit's music is at home in multiplicity. Lyrically focused, she has a honey voice alternately delicate and vast. Meklit's is both songwriter and composer, equally inhabiting the recording/touring world, as well as the world of the arts and culture. In 2007, she self-released h...

*

Meklit Hadero is an Ethiopian-born singer, musician, and Resident Artist at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco. Drawing inspiration from Jazz instrumentalists, American songwriters, and Ethiopian vocalists, Meklit's music is at home in multiplicity. Lyrically focused, she has a honey voice alternately delicate and vast.

Meklit's is both songwriter and composer, equally inhabiting the recording/touring world, as well as the world of the arts and culture. In 2007, she self-released her first EP, titled "Eight Songs…." Currently she is signed to Porto Franco Records, and her latest studio album, "On a Day Like This..." will be released by the budding San Francisco label in April of 2010. The record features her most mature songwriting to date, with lush arrangements and an incredible collection of musicians representing the Mission District music scene, in which her sound grew its roots.

Meklit has received commissions to write music from the San Foundation Fund For Artists - for the intercultural musical ensemble Nefasha Ayer, from Brava! For Women in the Arts -for sound design and composition for the world-premier play "Over the Mountain," and from the de Young Museum - to create a new body of music during a month-long residency in June of 2009.

Meklit is the recipient of the 2008 Individual Grant from the Belle Foundation for Cultural Development. She is also a 2009 TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Global Fellow, attending, speaking and performing at the TED Global Conference at Oxford University in July of 2009.

In February of 2009, she founded the Arba Minch Collective, a group of fifteen outstanding artists from the Ethiopian Diaspora living in North America. In December of 2009, the group will travel to the 1000 Stars Festival of Traditional Music in Arba Minch, Ethiopia, as well as perform in the Ethiopian and Kenyan capital citiies of Addis Ababa and Nairobi.

Meklit has been profiled three times by the San Francisco Chronicle, by the San Francisco Weekly, the quarterly arts journal Hoboeye, and has interviewed/performed on KQED and KPFA. She has played or will soon play at venues including Yoshi's, Cafe Du Nord, The Bottom of the Hill, the Yerba Buena Garden's Festival, the Red Poppy Art House, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Bumbershoot Music Festival, the de Young Museum, and more.

Meklit is also a member of experimental hip-hop group Copperwire, along with Gabriel Teodoros and Burntface.
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