According to the country’s state-run news outlet Fana Broadcasting Corporate, she died in Jerusalem. Guèbrou had been living at the Ethiopian Monastery there for almost 40 years.
As a child, she spent time as a prisoner of war and went on to study under the Polish violinist Alexander Kontorowicz in Cairo.
Guèbrou released her first album in 1967, donating proceeds to those in need, and continued to use money made from her music to help raise aid for Ethiopian children orphaned by war. The Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Foundation was also established to help children in need to study music.
After her mother’s death in 1984, Guèbrou moved to the Ethiopian Monastery in Jerusalem.
Her music has been used in the Oscar-nominated 2020 documentary Time and in Rebecca Hall’s Netflix drama Passing. Over her life, Guèbrou composed more than 150 original works of music for piano, organ, opera and chamber ensembles.
Journalist and author Kate Molleson made a documentary about her for BBC Radio Four called The Honky Tonk Nun. She described Guèbrou as “a woman whose choices were determined by religious self-exile, maverick gender struggles and Ethiopia’s dramatic 20th-century political history – and who became a singular artist in the process”.
Guèbrou once said to Molleson: “We can’t always choose what life brings. But we can choose how to respond.”
- This article was amended on 27 March 2023 to correct the name of the film The Honky Tonk Nun from The Honky Tonk Man
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I was hoping you would consider taking the step of supporting the Guardian’s journalism.
From Elon Musk to Rupert Murdoch, a small number of billionaire owners have a powerful hold on so much of the information that reaches the public about what’s happening in the world. The Guardian is different. We have no billionaire owner or shareholders to consider. Our journalism is produced to serve the public interest – not profit motives.
And we avoid the trap that befalls much US media – the tendency, born of a desire to please all sides, to engage in false equivalence in the name of neutrality. While fairness guides everything we do, we know there is a right and a wrong position in the fight against racism and for reproductive justice. When we report on issues like the climate crisis, we’re not afraid to name who is responsible. And as a global news organization, we’re able to provide a fresh, outsider perspective on US politics – one so often missing from the insular American media bubble.
Around the world, readers can access the Guardian’s paywall-free journalism because of our unique reader-supported model. That’s because of people like you. Our readers keep us independent, beholden to no outside influence and accessible to everyone – whether they can afford to pay for news, or not.
Betsy Reed
Editor, Guardian US
RIP! A very great woman indeed.
I share the sentiment of TOMY.
MAY I ADD these words >>>> ‘AND PRIDE TO ETHIOPIA’ ?
ETHIOPIA, AN ANCIENT NATION, PRIDE TO BLACK AFRICA, THAT NO BODY CAN MUCH, NOR TAKE AWAY. WHAT A GLORIOUS HISTORY (*)
————————–
(*) but, very sadly, the current ETHIOPIA seems to be completely confused of the CURRENT TIMES, and sadly ‘flying’ in the WRONG DIRECTION. Various Admirable ETHIOPIAN GIANTS of the past HISTORY may now be twisting in their graves. Indeed, as the old saying goes, it is all “GONE WITH THE WIND” >>>leaving almost nothing for current Ethiopians to be proud of their ancestors!!!! WOW! What a SAD CLASSICAL TRAGEDY.