Bleep

With thanks to Awesome Tapes From Africa, the rest of the world now has access to the work of Asnakech Worku, one of modern Ethiopia’s best-loved cultural icons. From her beginnings as Ethiopia’s first stage actress in the early 50s to her death in 2011, Worku dazzled and fought her way through a misogynist half-century to perform flawlessly in much of anything she put to record, whether stellar originals or arrangements of traditional songs, virtuosically rendered on her krar harp.