Meklit Hadero

Photo by Kenny Mathieson

Meklit Hadero is an award winning Ethio-American vocalist, composer, and cultural strategist. She is known for her electric stage presence and deeply personal Ethio-Jazz songs. Her performances have taken her around the world, from Addis Ababa - where she is a household name - to San Francisco, NYC, Nairobi, Rio, Cairo, Montreal, London, Zurich, Rome, Helsinki and more. Meklit is co-founder and host of Movement, a new radio series, podcast and live show exploring the intersection of global migration and music. Grounded in her experience as a refugee in her youth, Movement aims to inspire narrative change and shift public imagination around immigration and migration. Movement airs regularly to 2.5 million listeners as a special feature of PRX’s The World. Meklit is Chief of Program at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, as well as a National Geographic Explorer, and a TED Senior Fellow. She has collaborated with Kronos Quartet, Andrew Bird, and the late musical legend Pee Wee Ellis. She has been commissioned to create new work by Lincoln Center, Stanford Live, UCLA, Meany Center for the Performing Arts @ UW, MAP Fund and many more. She is the co-Founder of the Nile Project, and a featured voice in UN Women’s theme song. Meklit’s music and projects have been covered by The New York Times, NPR, BBC, CNN, Washington Post, Vibe Magazine, and many more.

GM: Your background is predominantly in music as a singer-songwriter. What was your path to this career, and do you still perform?

MH: I definitely still do it. I started at YBCA in January of 2020, about six weeks before the pandemic. So I didn’t do much of it in 2020 and 2021, but things are heating up again. When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a singer-songwriter. My family and I came to the U.S. as refugees, so they were supportive of music as a hobby, but didn’t take it seriously. So I put it aside. But when I moved to San Francisco in 2004, I became immersed in the creative arts scene in the Mission District. I started working at the Red Poppy Art House and met folks from everywhere in the world, who were working collaboratively to create a foundational practice across disciplines that were relevant to the world around them and had social impact. As soon as I found that, I understood my path; from there, every step I took towards music, music took ten steps towards me. That also meant that I became an organizer at the same time that I became an artist, as those things were very intertwined. I have a recorded EP that I am waiting to release, and I’m working with two Bay Area based organizations, Women’s Audio Mission and the Creative Work Fund, on a project of traditional Ethiopian songs that have been reimagined. I also have a music and migration live show, radio show, and podcast called Movement.

GM: You are currently Chief of Program at YBCA. What does this position entail, and what does working at YBCA mean to you?

MH: In the past, YBCA was very organized around specific disciplines – visual arts, performing arts, and community engagement – and they were all on very separate paths. Deborah Cullinan brought me in to really think about the program holistically and focus our work on artists who are at the intersections of social justice, community well-being, and their creative practices, and having that be the through line and organizing principle, regardless of the discipline. (Continued)

I’ ve always found that bringing people together and making space for others is really important in my practice, whether it was working at the Red Poppy Art House, the Nile Project that I co-founded, or any of the community projects that I’ ve done over the years. When we make space for others, we make space for ourselves; it’s absolutely a two-way street. YBCA is a place where I get to do that, but on a bigger scale. The pandemic put us in a space where we could do a lot of re-imagining and designing new programs, which has been really powerful. [Some examples are] the YBCA 10 cohort, The Healing Project, and the Artist Power Convenings, as well as work in innovating systems - like the Artist Led Giving Circle. So that’s been a really interesting and challenging journey because of the pandemic; to start a new job and then only a few weeks later find out that you ’re basically closed for a year and half. It’s been a big learning experience, and I hope that we’ ve been able to create programs that make a real difference for artists.

Photo by John Nilsen

GM: You touched on this, but as Chief of Program, what are some new initiatives that you’re working on?

MH: The idea with the YBCA 10 was that we made a significant investment in artists who work around creative practice and community well-being. The cohort is entirely BIPOC artists who all have a track record of not just powerful work, but creative projects that look at the intersections of racial and climate justice. [The final presentation] was not about a curated exhibition, but what happens when a group of artists like that takes over our spaces. It was a very creative, collaborative process with them, using a very different approach from the way we’ ve worked previously. The experiences turned out really beautifully! We’ ve also welcomed The Healing Project, which is an initiative of Samora Pinderhughes, a composer and multi-instrumentalist. It was based on 100 interviews with former or currently incarcerated people about their healing and resilience practices. It’s an exhibition experience, a digital archive of scored stories, and a series of performances and community engagement activities. But it’s a real constellation. (Continued)

The digital archive is online and the exhibition experience is live with us right now. Our gallery experiences are free now, which has been a big change for us as well, we’re making sure that art and creative practice can be accessible.

GM: How do you highlight BIPOC in your practice?

MH: We are focused on artists from marginalized communities throughout our work. If we’re an organization that’s really working at that intersection of creative practice and social change, it’s really important that we do that. The YBCA 10 is an entirely BIPOC cohort looking at radical practice, racial justice, and climate justice as a center point. But it’s also about looking at healing, repair, and resilience. We are in a place where we want to be artist-led. When we worked with those artists, it was really important for them that [their presented works] not be all about trauma, but joy, healing, rootedness, and connection. So what you ’ll find is that YBCA has more of that focus, flavor, approach, perspective, and framing throughout.

GM: What you just said really stuck with me. In the last 5-10 years, many Black artists have been commissioned to make works in response to politics and trauma, and it’s really interesting to instead look at artworks that dismantle those stereotypes of what Black art is “supposed” to be.

MH: Absolutely – this is part of what happens when it’s the artists themselves who are in the lead, setting the tone, saying what they need, and defining the narratives for themselves and their communities as well.

Photo by John Nilsen

Photo by Ibra Acke, Artistic Direction by Wangechi Mutu

GM: What could art institutions do to better engage with Black art and artists, especially in terms of exhibition organizing and programming thematics?

MH: You know, I had a really interesting conversation with Alice Shepherd, an amazing Afro-British disabled dancer-choreographer who works between the Bay Area and New York. In the conversation with Alice, she said that she doesn’t like the term “inclusion” because it implies that there is an includer and someone who is excluded. For her, it’s all about equity and access. The main thing is that institutions have to be reflective about how power dynamics show up. We have a lot of work to do around institutions in general surrounding anti-racism. We have to guide, push, and invite institutions to directly address history in not only the ways that they program, but also how they structure themselves. We all have a lot of work to do, but I think for us one of the most important things is co-creation as a fundamental principle. So, understanding that institutions don’t have all the answers and that the only way that we’re going to get to spaces of equity is when we’re in a place of sharing power and making sure that the artists that we’re working with – and the communities that those artists are serving – have a voice in what happens in institutions. For me, that’s what the key is – how we listen, become listening organizations, and have humility. But also create structures around that learning so that it’s not just about the leader of an organization at a certain time, but instead making changes permanent and long-term.