Project Title:TEZETA | NOSTALGIA
Country: USA/ARMENIA/ETHIOPIA
Co-production: None
Directors: Aramazt Kalayjian, Garegin Papoyan
Producer: Aramazt Kalayjian
Co-Producer: Vahan Khatchatryan
Runtime: 70 Minutes
Genre/type: Documentary
Shooting Format: 4K
Colour:
Language: English, Armenian, Amharic
Subtitles: English
Production Status: Post-production
Estimated Budget: 120,000EUR
“Outdoing yesterday, shouldering on today, Borrowing from tomorrow, renewing yesteryears, Comes Tezeta hauling possessions.” – a Tezeta lyric
Tezeta is nostalgia in Ethiopian Amharic. It is the loss of something that still lingers within your soul. It is deep yearning for a time that has not yet come. It is the song sung in different words, by many artists yet with the same kind of blue. In the bustling capital of Ethiopia, our story weaves the nostalgic longing for a past and yearning for the future through woven with jazz music that once was and will be.
In Addis Ababa, this fading memory of a time that was can be seen in the washes of architecture from empirical times, the socialist era and the now democratic, “mixed” free-market economy that has brought in large foreign investments, effectively changing the city’s landscape. Seemingly random skyscrapers now block the view where the revered Queen Taitu had her personal balcony.
Piazza, the old city center, where an Ethiopian jazz renaissance was rekindled only years ago, has now deteriorated to night clubs and party life. Buildings are disappearing and the people who know their stories with it. Jazzamba, a jazz club where great musicians used to once play, now lays in rubble ruins after a devastating fire. Great musicians like Mulatu Astatqe, guitarist Gurum Mezmur, the “Elvis of Ethiopia” singer Alemayehu, the great Ethiopian singer Germa Negash, music producer Amha Eshete and Francis Falceto share their tezeta about their own nostalgia, their own loss and desires and the “father of Ethiopian modern music,” Nerses Nalbandian, who taught most of Ethiopia’s famous bands, orchestras and singers.
Nerses Nalbandian was part of a group of ethnic Armenians charged with modernizing the nation for the emperors of Ethiopia when the empire was strictly forbidden to white-skinned foreigners for fear of colonization. The Armenians’ musical history in Ethiopia began from the time of Emperor Haile Selassie. In 1932, he adopted 40 Armenian orphans from Jerusalem, who would become the first imperial brass orchestra. This immense act by the emperor, and the orphans unique role helped popularize brass instruments and shape the foundation for a future big-band jazz revolution in Ethiopia, which now seems to be only a memory.
