The 9-member music ensemble Ethiocolor draws deeply from Ethiopia’s 2000-year-old Azmari culture of storytelling singers that play traditional string instruments. Ethiocolor blends these ancient roots with modern styles to explore how Ethiopian music and dance have evolved to transcend time and space.

The group’s founder, Melaku Belay, is a cultural force in Ethiopia and a champion of the traditional eskista, a rhythmic, shoulder-shimmying dance, described by the New York Times as a “walking earthquake”. Audiences struggle to sit still in the face of Ethiocolor’s gleeful intensity, the music and movement celebrating “our shared human desire and capacity for peace, love, joy, and justice."