Meklit Hadero is an Ethiopian-American singer-songwriter living the cultural in-between, both in her own luminous compositions and as a co-founder of the Nile Project.

Meklit’s music is imbued with poetry and multiplicity, from hybridized sounds of Tizita (haunting and nostalgic music) drawing from her Ethiopian heritage, to the annals of 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. Her songs celebrate the newness of life and the hyphens that bring us together.

Meklit has released five studio albums - including 2014's We Are Alive and 2010's On A Day Like This - and is currently signed to Six Degrees Records. She is a TED Senior Fellow, and has served as an artist-in-residence at NYU, curated a performance series at the Lincoln Center Atrium, co-designed and implemented an artist fellowship program for the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and completed musical commissions for the SF Arts Commission, the Fund for Artists, the Brava Theater, and the De Young Museum. Meklit was lead artist for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts In-Community program Home [Away From] Home. and in 2011, she co-founded the Nile Project with Egyptian Ethnomusicologist Mina Girgis. Meklit is the founder of the Arba Minch Collective, former Co-Director of the Red Poppy Art House, and has received performance grants from the Zellerbach Family Foundation and the Belle Foundation for Cultural Development. Meklit is currently working on a body of music steeped in Ethio-Jazz thanks to a grant from the prestigious MAP Fund. She holds a BA in Political Science from Yale University and sits on the board of YBCA.

Women, Musician, Music, TED, Non-Profit & Association, Singer-Songwriter, Poetry, Culture