Meklit’s music is imbued with poetry and multiplicity, from hybridized sounds of Tizita (haunting and nostalgic music) drawing from her Ethiopian heritage, to jazz, folk songs, hip-hop and art rock. She aptly describes her music as emanating from “in-between-spaces.”

Listening to Meklit transports us to the post-national space of Africa and America, inspiring us to bridge the frontiers between language, tribes and disciplines.

Meklit is an Ethio-American singer, composer, and cultural instigator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her music sits on the hyphen line, born as equally from San Francisco as it is from Addis Ababa.

Meklit’s third record comes out this spring on Six Degrees Records and is produced by multi-GRAMMY winning artist/songwriter Dan Wilson (Adele, John Legend, Dixie Chicks). Deeply inspired by Mulatu Astatke (the Godfather of Ethio-Jazz), the songs shine with pentatonic melodies, Ethio groove, and a singer-songwriter’s poetic core. This is immigrant music and American music all at the same time.

Meklit is a TED Senior Fellow and her TED Talk, The Unexpected Beauty of Everyday Sounds, has been watched by more than 1 million people.

She has received musical commissions from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the MAP Fund and has toured extensively across the US, UK, and East Africa. As an artist-in-residence at Universities including NYU and Purdue, she explores questions of cultural activism, thinking about how music and arts can help us ask questions about who we are and where we want to go collectively.

In 2011, she co-founded the Nile Project with Egyptian ethnomusicologist Mina Girgis, which the New York Times called “a committed, euphoric, international coalition.”

“Captivating” – THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

“Meklit delivers a sound all her own…[We Are Alive] gets even better with each listen” – USA TODAY

“Her afro reaching towards the sun, her voice swimming its way across borders, Meklit blends sounds and sayings of her native Ethiopia with a style that evokes the nuanced windings of black American jazz and soul… We Are Alive [is] a stunning medley of songs that showcase Meklit’s growth since her 2010 debut, On A Day Like This.” – MTV IGGY

“Meklit Hadero is one of those rare artists with the power to bridge genres, geography and generations.” -GOOGLE MUSIC

“Soulful, tremulous and strangely cinematic, Hadero’s voice will implant scenes in your mind — a softly lit supperclub, a Brooklyn stoop, a sun-baked road. Close your eyes, listen and dream. – SEATTLE TIMES

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