Jay Ray: Meklit Hadero is an Ethiopian-American vocalist,
songwriter, and composer, known
for her electric stage presence, innovative sound
and vibrant cultural activism.
Her
latest EP, titled Ethio Blue, was released March 8, 2024 and spent nearly 2 months
at #12 on the NACC World Charts.
Meklit’s Ethio-Jazz performances have taken her to renowned stages across 4
continents.
Her albums have topped world music charts across the US + Europe,
received rave reviews, and been covered extensively by the press.
Meklit has
collaborated with renowned artists such as Kronos Quartet, Andrew Bird,
Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and the late creator of funk music, Pee Wee Ellis.
Meklit has always straddled her creative practice with her passion for cultural
activism.
She is the former Chief of Program at Yerba Buena Center for the
Arts in San Francisco, where she helped design and implement a
slate of radical programs supporting social justice
focused artists during the height
of the pandemic.
She is a sought after thought leader and speaker and has given
talks on multiple TED Stages, at the UN, and at the National
Geographic Storytellers
Summit, as well as at institutions, organizations and
Universities around the globe.
Meklit is a National Geographic Explorer, a TED Senior Fellow, and a former
Artistin-Residence at Harvard University.
She is the co-founder of the Nile Project, a
featured voice in UN Women’s theme song and the winner of the 2021 globalFEST
Artist Award.
Meklit has been a guest DJ on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic,
created new works via commissions from Lincoln Center, MAP Fund, Center for the
Art of Performance at UCLA, Stanford Live, NYU Abu Dhabi and many more.
Her
music has been featured by the New York Times, BBC, CNN, NPR, Washington Post,
Vibe Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe and many more.
Meklit is co-founder, co-producer and host of Movement, a podcast, radio series
, live performance series and community building initiative uplifting
the stories, songs and cultural power of immigrant musicians.
The show airs monthly on PRX’s
The World to an audience of 2.5 million listeners.
Season 2 of Movement launches
July 16, 2024, wherever you get your podcasts.
Enjoy the show.
DJ Sir Daniel: Greetings and welcome to another episode of Queue Points podcast.
I am DJ Sir Daniel.
Jay Ray: And my name is Jay Ray, sometimes known by my government
as Johnny Ray Kornegay III.
What's happening y'all.
DJ Sir Daniel: Listen, Queue Points podcast is the podcast dropping
the needle on black music history.
And Jay Ray, I am so proud that we are a podcast, a movement that, um, is a
staunch supporter of all black stories.
Coming from not only here in the United States, but of course, all the stories
that are coming from the diaspora.
And we have a special guest on this episode, Jay Ray,
please introduce our guests.
Jay Ray: Folks, um, we are incredibly excited to welcome
Meklit Hedero to Queue Points.
Meklit, welcome to the show.
How are you?
Meklit Hadero: Oh, I'm so good.
It's so good to be here with you.
I love talking about all things diaspora.
So here I am at home, you know?
DJ Sir Daniel: We had to do it.
Jay Ray: Absolutely.
So we have several things we want to discuss with you.
Of course, we want to get into your podcast, but here's what's interesting.
Your podcast is a radio show.
So it's like podcast radio show all the movement.
And all the things, right?
But before we get into that, so I recently caught, um, that you did a performance.
This was back in August.
It was at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival.
Meklit Hadero: Yes.
Jay Ray: I wanted to be here so bad.
So you did this performance.
It was, um, called Meklitz Movement Immigrant Orchestra.
And from the description, it was 13 musicians.
representing 11 countries, including India, Mexico, Ethiopia,
Cuba, Italy, Taiwan, Spain, Iran, Mali, Haiti, Palestine, Meklit.
Let's talk about you and your musicianship and a bit about what inspired you
to convene all of these musicians.
Meklit Hadero: Well, thank you for asking about that moment, because I
have to say that was like one of the highlights of my entire musical career,
and I think, you know, the underlying.
thing for me is that I like to tell bigger stories together with other
artists than I can do by myself.
And I think when you get people together, um, there's from across, you know,
boundaries, whether those boundaries are invisible lines on a map that
are called countries, or whether they are, um, you know, uh, from different
communities and cultures of all kinds.
I think there's always a power in gathering folks and
there's an X factor in it.
So that actually, the movement immigrant orchestra actually started
out of this series of gatherings of immigrant musicians that we were having.
I was like, you know, our communities are under attack in a way that
is just constant and oppressive.
And we need to be together and understand from a place that
starts from our cultural power.
So we just started.
having gatherings and food and what happens when you get musicians
together is that they want to play.
And so we would, but people also had this very deep understanding of the struggles,
you know, like a lot of times immigrant communities can be siloed across ethnicity
or language or But we actually have a lot of the same struggles, we all, that's what
solidarity means, like actually we are all the same forces that are oppressing, you
know, it's, it's a cross, it's a cross.
Um, so we just, like, we started gathering folks and realized we had so many
stories that were echoes of each other.
And then we would be sharing these very deep, powerful stories with each other.
And then people would be like, you know, you get into an emotional space.
And But then you're like, okay, we're going to put it in the music and we
would have these jams that would just last and they were, you know, I was
like, yo, this, you know, the first one, there's this, um, uh, Malian and
Goni player called Mamadou Sidibe and he grows the gourds in Chico, California.
And then in Oakland, he builds them and they are these artworks.
They are these, I mean, they're literally like sound artworks.
Like they're so beautiful.
And he started playing with, um, a cellist from Korea and a guitarist
from Spain, and everybody was like.
Uh, I, it, uh, but like we, we literally, like, actually,
it's not a place for words.
It's a place for sounds and we just wanted to be together and
play together, and that's how the immigrant orchestra started.
But what I, but then what I didn't totally realize was how cathartic it would be
for the audience, you know, because we came from this, like, we built a
love amongst each other and, you know.
And then we were able to bring that to the audience and they wouldn't
let us go for two hours, two hours telling us the experiences that
they had had in this concert.
So it was very special.
We will be doing more of it.
Um, we need solidarity.
Um, and when we can do it with cultural power at the center, then we
can invite so many others into that space of, of love and connection.
Jay Ray: Yeah.
Mm-Hmm?
DJ Sir Daniel: know, McLee, as I listen to you speak, um, what stands out to
me is something that I've always, that I always talk about on this show when
we discuss the power of music and the fact that musicians, singers, musicians,
when you're in that moment, there is.
Being in that moment of being on stage and playing together as a
collective is a cracking open, cracking open of your spirit to allow the
source to come and move through you.
That's what happens during our praise and worship at church.
You know, when, when music is involved and those emotions get high, there's
a cracking open of your spirit and it allows the source to come through.
And I say that all the time.
And that's what I'm hearing about.
That experience that J Ray was speaking of, but you also get
to experience something that I feel is also life changing.
And that's travel, travel changes.
You travel makes you a different person.
And as an, as an immigrant myself, I experienced that as a, as a child.
So what, what are you hoping or what is your plan to bring that
experience to a larger audience?
Um, To create, to let, to allow everybody else to feel that shift,
because like you said, right now, immigrants are under attack.
Black people are, Black people are under attack and they don't understand.
And a lot of times we don't understand that we're all one in the same.
And just because we may have been born someplace different,
there are, there are powers that be that are trying to eliminate.
Um, large groups of people.
So in your messaging and in your travels and all the work that you're
doing, you're doing, what is your game plan to, to use your, your powers
to crack that collective experience?
Meklit Hadero: Oh, you just got right to the heart of 2024, didn't you?
DJ Sir Daniel: That's
Jay Ray: It's what we do here on Q.
DJ Sir Daniel: That's what I do.
That's what we do.
Meklit Hadero: you know, I, first of all, there's so many, like,
when it comes to cultural strategy, there's never, like, you can't
actually come at it in just one way.
So what I, what I want to say is that there's a few different ways
that I can answer that question and I'll just run through them.
And then you stop me if you have questions in between, cause you know, I could talk.
Talk
DJ Sir Daniel: Love that.
Meklit Hadero: I could just keep going.
Um, okay.
From a personal place.
I just want to speak for a moment about my music.
I make music that's Ethiopian jazz.
I stand on the shoulders of Giants.
I am on a continuum.
The music that I make is deeply influenced by Ethiopian pentatonic
scales, melodies, and rhythms.
African music and jazz is also African music.
Jay Ray: Yes.
Meklit Hadero: And so it There, for me, making Ethio Jazz is a place where
I have turned my experience of African diaspora solidarity into a sound practice
that I speak about everywhere I go.
Um, There's an amazing story about the origin of Ethiopian jazz, which
is that there's a man by the name of, um, is the creator of Ethiopian jazz.
And if you know, like the Ethiopiques, like the, like all those first
Ethiopiques that folks would hear.
That was him as the composer and vibraphonist and conga player.
Now, itio jazz came about because Murata Astatke was the first African to graduate
from the Berkeley college of music.
And he went to New York and he was playing congas with a bunch of Cuban congeros
and he saw, Hey, they're bringing their.
Traditional music into a relationship with jazz.
And then there's a famous story of him, uh, playing with John Coltrane
and Coltrane took him aside and said, yo, you gotta bring your
traditional music together with jazz.
Like you bring it to the root.
He ended up moving back to Ethiopia and created Ethio jazz from there.
So there would be no Ethiopian jazz without not only the mentorship
of African American giants.
Of music, but also Cuban musicians.
And we know that the, the histories of forced migration that birthed, that
birthed the music of the Americas runs deeply, deeply through every single
time that I stand on a stage and sing, I sing solidarity like that is my.
So there's, sometimes I like to say that we use music to talk about the
things that are hard to talk about the places where our tongues get stuck.
And so.
The, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to, the first thing I'm
going to do is I'm going to write songs that acknowledge history, that look
history in the eye, and do not erase any peoples from any, from any story.
So that's number one, number one, number one.
Number two, the, the project, you know, Movement is a podcast, it's a
radio show, it's a live performance experience that is about the
intersection of music and migration.
Here's the way I think about it.
We have a national strategy that is our podcast and radio show that's
about narratives of migration based in the people who have experienced it.
That means our stories coming from lived experiences with nuance.
With tenderness with a focus on ancestral wisdom, continuum, epiphany, um, right as
we can look pain, trauma, and difficulty in the eye and say that we get to make the
meaning out of all of those experiences.
Now, at the same time, understanding that we're in a place where oppression
must be challenged every single day, but oppression cannot be challenged
only on You know, only in this way, like what I started to understand
was that, like, I loved making the podcast and the radio show, but I
needed it to live in my community too.
I needed it to be in my everyday where I walked down the street and to be able
to have an impact on my direct community and the movement and the movement
gathering strategy, the immigrant orchestra, our solidarity building
strategy really comes out of that.
So, and it's also, uh, solidarity also for me means that.
We understand that in the age of climate crisis like things are
probably about to get a lot more difficult before they get better.
And we need each other we need interconnection to be able to be,
to be able to not just withstand but to create new systems that
are based from the ground up.
And so,
So, so the Immigrant Orchestra, our gathering strategy, building solidarity,
not just within immigrant communities, but across oppressed communities, is a
part of how we create new systems that will actually get us to the place we
want to go, which is non hierarchical, which is based in culture and cultural
power, which is, um, organized, which is being able to say what our communities
need and pressure the people who are in power to support us in getting where we
folks what they need every single day.
I think I'll stop.
Jay Ray: Wow.
I have a question in here.
It is.
I find it so innovative that you as a multifaceted creative also decided
to insert podcasting into your work.
Wind.
How did that come about?
Because I, seeing this is like, Oh my goodness.
This is like the perfect way to extend these conversations, these stories, right?
That, that impact people so deeply.
So how did that epiphany come?
Meklit Hadero: It wasn't an epiphany.
I wish it was.
I wish I had a great epiphany story for you, but you know how sometimes things
are just one foot in front of the other,
Jay Ray: Yes.
Meklit Hadero: you know, sometimes it's like, well, you know, anyway, um, I had
a very dear friend called Julie Kane.
She is now, um, Senior editor at through line, which is, um, a new show
on NPR and they do, um, long form.
They do hour long documentaries weekly, which are amazing.
And Julie was, um, Julie invited me.
She basically was like, Hey, I want to make a podcast about world music.
What do you think?
And we started to, at the time I was, I had a booking, I had a
booking agency with my partner.
It was like a very little boutique booking agency and it was called 2042.
And it was about, at that time, back in 2017, that was the year that the United
States was no longer projected to have a cultural majority or an ethnic majority.
I don't like the word majority minority because we're not a
minority, actually, in the world.
We're the, we're the majority.
Jay Ray: are Right.
Meklit Hadero: you know,
DJ Sir Daniel: call a thing, a thing
Jay Ray: right?
Meklit Hadero: you know, so, so we had, so, and I was telling her about 2042, and
then we decided together Like let's, let's do a podcast about music and migration.
And so we kind of started, uh, we started cooking it and she brought in an amazing
producer who has been my ride or die, Ian Coss, who's like, just want a Peabody.
He's genius.
He's like the most trust based heartfelt person.
Um, yeah.
multi talented musician, editor, sound designer, and we started making stuff, and
then, uh, and then it evolved into this today, and it took a long time, took a
long time to find our partners, we knocked on many doors, many people were like, yes,
yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, uh uh, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, and so we just, we had to find our own way, you know,
Jay Ray: Yeah.
Wow, wow, wow, wow.
Um, really quickly.
So in listening to movement, um.
You hear the sound design, you hear your storytelling in there as, um,
I love the way you just process the conversations that you're having with
the folks that you're talking to.
Um, you're welcome.
Um, so my question to you is how, if at all, is the making of these movement
episodes kind of like songwriting?
Yes.
Meklit Hadero: It's, it's very creative.
It's a very creative process.
Um, it's very different from songwriting is I think of songwriting as a mix
of discipline and mystery, you know, um, you know, if you, if you ask
a lot of songwriters and you say, well, where did the song come from?
They're like, I don't, I don't, I don't really know.
You know, and it's, it's kind of like you and the, and it's about that
cracking open that you talked about
before.
So, so songwriting for me is like catching melodies as they come,
recording them, and then going into the studio and like, Working it,
working it, working it, working it.
So the essay writing, the storytelling, is a working it,
working, and it's very emotional.
It's actually, it's actually kind of difficult, you know, because you have to
process, I don't know, like, not in a lot.
It's just like you have to find a little fractal place in your own life
where some huge question gets distilled into like a very simple exchange.
And so it's actually interesting.
I haven't thought about it, but I have started collecting stories,
the way I collect melodies and then finding where I can insert them.
So maybe it's more, maybe this question has brought out for me how
it's more similar than I realized.
And then I do have to like work it, work, work, work.
And it's different because it's prose.
And then I have to speak it out loud.
So I write it, I speak it, I edit it.
Cause it has to sound good spoken.
So that's very different, but it's sort of similar when you write something and then
you sing it and you realize, Oh, okay.
The phrasing, all the phrasing of this word, I need a word.
That's kind of two, that's two syllables here.
I can't use the word that's for, you know, so, so it is a Cree.
It is a very creative process.
What I'll say that's different.
That's really fun for me is that I've not.
I haven't ever quite done the essay based creative writing that I have to
do to make the stories come alive in the podcast and that's a new muscle
for me and I'm really enjoying it.
I do love it.
Like I find that the final Outcome is like this exact place between like, just
speaking a story and then like crafting, you know, the crafting part of it.
So I, I actually really enjoy it, even though it's, it's a challenge.
It's not like, it takes me time.
I don't, it's not instantaneous at all.
I'll work on an essay for like two weeks.
Stuff like, you know, things like that.
Jay Ray: Mm.
DJ Sir Daniel: And so I, you know, and, and listening to, um, movement and what
resonates with me a lot is the fact that as an immigrant, like I said before, I
came to this country at two years old, uh, from Barbados and growing up and being.
And matriculating through American culture and being a part of American culture.
And I don't know if you experienced it, experienced this, but there
is becoming more and more.
There's a voice that's getting louder amongst.
Black Americans, um, that are, feel like they're in, uh, not competition,
but there is this, I don't know, this weirdness that has, that I'm feeling
developed, not even developing, but it's been there for a while.
And you hear things because we're so, we're so, you know, we're so stealth
because I'm, I'm here, I've been here.
So I'm S but I'm stuff.
And I hear the things I hear the comments every now and then I hear the little.
You know, those foreigners, this, those immigrants, that, you
know, uh, Caribbean people think they're better than everybody.
Africans do this and that, you know, you hear little stuff like that.
And I'm wondering how you've dealt with it.
Does a movement help you help in that healing process?
Because I think for me, I try not to get.
sidetracked by all those conversations, because I really do
believe that that's just another distraction to keep us fragmented.
And of course, when we're fragmented, you know, the powers
that be are going to keep winning.
And so, but I'm just wondering for you, McCleat, like in, in doing movement.
And, and, and, and healing.
Does that bring about a healing for you as we deal with this amongst
ourselves in this community, as black people from all parts of the
diaspora, all parts of the world?
Meklit Hadero: Yeah.
It's a very good question.
It's a very honest question.
I just want to thank you for your vulnerability also, because
that is, that's, it's painful.
DJ Sir Daniel: Yes.
Meklit Hadero: It's painful.
Um, and you know, for me, like definitely growing up, I had a lot
of questions about where I belonged.
And, um,
I think that, you know, You know, I got called African booty
scratcher growing up in New York.
I also came to this
DJ Sir Daniel: Oh, what part of New
Meklit Hadero: years old.
Oh, um, Crown Heights,
DJ Sir Daniel: Me too!
I grew up in Crown Heights.
Yes!
760 Crown Street between Utica and um, Eastern Parkway.
Meklit Hadero: lived on Eastern Parkway.
We lived, um, but we lived all over Brooklyn.
We lived in Bay Ridge.
And then, um, at the end we lived, uh, in Park Slope.
We lived in all those places, the eighties.
DJ Sir Daniel: Mm hmm.
Mm
Meklit Hadero: so, um, And definitely all of those things happened.
And I think that, you know, here's my generous.
So there are ways that I can look at these things with.
Like, I, I look at them from different levels.
I, so one level, and I don't mean to do this, it's kind of more like this.
It's not a hierarchy, it's like
Jay Ray: Right?
DJ Sir Daniel: hmm.
Meklit Hadero: seeds, you know?
So one way that I look at it is that, you know, when we came to this country,
there was a moment where my parents had to understand what race was.
that is a very alienating thing.
If you're an African American person hearing an African say, what is race?
That sounds like a slap in the face.
I can, I can walk into and, and the reason that I can, so I can walk
into that conversation with empathy right from the start, but because
I have lived both sides, right?
Because I've, because my communities are both communities.
And what I mean by that is that in Ethiopia, it's all about ethnicity.
It's all about like, are you Amhara?
Are you like, I'm actually also, to ethnicity.
My father is from a place called Kambatha, which is in the south of Ethiopia.
It's not a ethnic group that has a lot of political power.
It's, it's like relatively small.
There's not a lot of language speakers.
Uh, my mother is Amhara, which is one of the, you know, larger tribes that has had
historically a lot of political power.
That itself was like an inter ethnic marriage.
That was a big deal back then, you know?
Um, so they come to this country and they, and they have these identities.
that have a meaning for them, given the context that they were
in, and then everyone around them tells them, that doesn't matter.
What matters is that you're black.
And it's like, well, what does it mean to be black?
And you have to learn.
And so, and you also have to, so, so, so, so, so I try to have empathy for both
sides because also for my parents, it's like a shock, they're like, wait, what?
You know?
So, so, so I think there's like a basic,
um, lack of communication or, or like just understanding of context that
kind of leads to some of this stuff.
Um, and then somebody saying, well, you don't think you're us.
There was a lot of that.
And I, you know, for me and I was like, well, what does somebody see walking down
the street for me, you know, and then so then you're living this in between and
that was like my whole teenage years, you know, like my whole teenage years
was trying to find peace with that.
Um, and I honestly did it through reading black American literature,
you know, and talking to and talking to my community, you know, and
that's how I that's how I like.
And then reading like Audre Lorde and, um, bell hooks and, but then literally
Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison and that's how I, that's how I, that,
so because all of them are speaking these very complex stories and saying
nobody gets to make anyone a monolith.
And then I was saying, Oh, okay.
It's okay for me to not be a monolith.
Um, I can accept my complexity and my hybridity.
And I might be a paragraph.
I'm not a sentence.
But I'm pretty much guessing that they aren't either.
And somebody tries to make you just, to, you know, describe
you as two words, a black man.
Yes, you are and maybe sensitive and an introvert and you know like and
you're and your roots are from North Carolina and your roots might be from
Congo or you know, like it's just we all have We all have so much and
like, nobody can simplify any of us.
solidarity building as a strategy and a practice is always about
understanding that we have more in common than we do apart.
And, I think my healing So, oh, the one thing I wanted to say, there's
this, the first episode that we did in the podcast, season one, episode
one, is a brother called Oddisee, and I don't know if y'all know
Jay Ray: Oh MC producer all the above.
Yes.
Meklit Hadero: Yes.
Sudanese and African American.
he tells this amazing story because he became the bridge between exactly what
you were talking about, where he would go to his African American family and
they would be talking about foreigners.
And he would go to his Sudanese family and they would be talking about African
American people and he would be like, No, he would say no, but what about
and he transformed his family as a hybrid, as a bridge, as a bridge.
And so.
Like, I do think that there's so much that happens when love is involved, you know,
when personal connection is involved.
And that can be like between friends, that can be within a family,
that can be within a community.
But we do have so much more in common than we do different.
And the oppressive forces that seek to destroy us, that seek to
minimize us and strip us of our power are the same exact ones.
So who is winning?
Who is winning when, when those things, when those words get spoken?
And so there is a deep healing that needs to happen.
Um, and you know, I think that, you know,
there's a, there's a strange thing that happens when we think
things are our own struggles.
We think we, we think they, it is up to me to solve this, this deep wound.
But this is a systemic problem.
This is a systemic problem that needs systemic solutions that are
working at very large scale levels.
I think we're further along than we ever have been, even as we still see
those narratives popping up in people that we love, you know, in people
that we love and, and cherish and adore, and we don't, you know, so,
so we can be nodes of healing, and our healing can radiate outwards, And
at the same time, like, these are, these are systemic questions that have
to be answered at a systems level.
Jay Ray: Wow.
Meklit, thank you so much for sharing your gift, your gift of storytelling,
your gift of understanding and healing, um, with the Queue Points audience.
Um, so what are some things, um, that you would like to share with our folks
that people should be on the lookout for?
That you want to prep the folks for any upcoming performances, that sort of thing.
Meklit Hadero: Well, uh, well, I do want to say that I released an album earlier
this year called Ethioblue and, um, it was my first album in several years.
You know, pandemic.
I have a five year old.
So
Jay Ray: wants to be on the record, I'm sure.
Meklit Hadero: need I say more?
No, he is on the record.
Jay Ray: Oh.
DJ Sir Daniel: Oh,
Meklit Hadero: He is on the record.
He's on the record.
The very first song, Antidote, he was four months old when we, when we
recorded, we were doing some recording and he was making such cute sounds.
We were like, okay, come on, come on in front of a mic.
And he was like, it's like,
there's like a little bit of that the right way.
And then I am, uh, I just got the masters of a new record that will
come out next year on Smithsonian Folkways called A Piece of Infinity,
and it's, um, uh, interpretations of several different traditional
Ethiopian songs with some originals.
There's a very special song in there called Stars in a Wide Field that
is based on, um, the, Children's riddles from my father's tribe
Kambatha that are translated and they're like, it's a cosmology.
It's a universe.
It's a war.
It's like literally seeing into into the way of being the way people walk
through the world, you know, so that's like a collaboration between like
You know, millions of children and me, you know, because they're also
like, they're also, they're a mix of improvised and, uh, improvised riddles
and like, like, you know, like in traditional poetry, people memorize like
thousands and thousands of them, and then you got to bring them out at the
right time, like that kind of thing.
Jay Ray: That's so exciting.
Meklit Hadero: Thank
DJ Sir Daniel: McCleat, I, and I, uh, I know I can speak for Jay Ray on this.
I am so happy that you took the time out to join us on this episode of Queue
Points and to share your perspective and take us on this journey with you.
Um, like I said, we see each other, you know, that
Meklit Hadero: Yes, I do.
DJ Sir Daniel: had that I had that opportunity to share that experience and I
hope that, um, other people, you know, can get a glance into that part of our lives.
And I'm, we're so excited for what's coming up from you, but please let our
audience know how they can find you also.
Meklit Hadero: Yes.
Um, so you can find me on all the things, on all the socials at
Meklitmusic, M E K L I T music.
com.
That's my Instagram handle, TikTok, like all those things.
And then, listen, I live in San Francisco, and if you forget my
name You can literally Google Ethiopian singer, San Francisco.
And I come right up,
DJ Sir Daniel: Boom.
Boom.
There
Meklit Hadero: I'm telling you, because like part of the thing is I'm
like, people forget how to find me.
They're like, what was her name that I liked her.
What was that Ethiopian singer, San Francisco.
Okay.
DJ Sir Daniel: Dope.
Dope.
The one and only Maclete Hedero.
Thank you once again for joining us on this episode of Queue Points.
As I always say, Jay Ray, in this life, you have an opportunity.
You can either pick up a needle or you can let the record play.
I'm DJ Sir Daniel,
Jay Ray: My name is Jay Ray and thank you so much, Meklit Hedero,
for joining us as well, y'all.
DJ Sir Daniel: and this has been,
Meklit Hadero: well, everyone.
DJ Sir Daniel: thank you.
And this has been Queue Points podcast, dropping the
needle on black music history.
We'll see you on the next go round.
Peace.
Jay Ray: Peace, y'all.