Ethiopian Singer Jackie Gossee's 2012 love song "Sela Bey" (information & video)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part I of a two part pancocojams series on the Ethiopian love song "Sela Bey" by Jackie Gossee.

Part I provides information about Ethiopian singer Jackie Gosee and showcases the official YouTube video of his 2012 hit love song "Sela Bey". In addition, Part I includes information and questions about the meanings of the words "Sela  Bey" in that song.  

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-global-reach-of-ethiopian-singer.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. Part II showcases the official YouTube video of Ethiopian singer Jackie Gosee's song "Sela Bey". Part II also presents selected comments from the discussion thread of that video are also included in this post.

The content of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Jacky Gosee for his musical legacy thanks to all those who are associated with this music and this video. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post. Thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube.

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SHOWCASE VIDEO- Jacky Gosee - Sela Bey

Hope Music Ethiopia, Dec 28, 2012
-snip-
Statistics as of June 25, 2020 at 3:10 PM EDT
Total # of views-8,432,261
Total # of likes-17K
Total # of dislikes-2.6K
Total # of comments-1,812

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INFORMATION ABOUT JACKY GOSEE
From https://www.musicinafrica.net/node/8317#:~:text=Gosee%20lives%20in%20Amsterdam%2C%20and,to%20the%20Ethiopian%20pop%20sound.&text=Jacky%20was%20born%20in%20Ethiopia,establishing%20himself%20as%20an%20artist
"Gossaye Kellemu, alias Jacky Gosee, is one of the vocalists from the younger generation rising to Ethiopian stardom, along with guys like Temesgen Gebregziabher and Ziggy Zaga. Gosee lives in Amsterdam, and brings something of a modern, urban image to the Ethiopian pop sound.

Judging by the number of Facebook pages with titles like “I Love Jacky Gosee,” it appears that the baby-faced singer is particularly popular with the ladies. His biggest hit, “Sela Bey” features a nasty solo on the traditional mesengo fiddle and some wild choreographies.

Jacky was born in Ethiopia but relocated to The Netherlands at a young age. He has been overcoming many barriers to achieve his goal in establishing himself as an artist."

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From https://habeshaentertainment.blogspot.com/2014/07/jacky-gosee.html

Know one of Ethiopian Celebrities Jacky Gosee, Posted by Habesha Entertaiment, July 14, 2014

"Jacky Gosee is one of the most famous celebrities in Ethiopia this days. Jacky is well known for his unique style of singing and dancing of mixed traditional and modern music. He developed this ways of music since he was a child when he was working for Child’s Theater House where he used to sing and dance both traditional and modern songs and he got this idea of joining them together.

Jacky Gosee is high school graduate and he stopped his education because he was highly attracted by the music work.

Most of Ethiopians like Jacky Gosee for his work and they call him the Ethiopian Chris Brown. Not only the people love Jacky Gosee but he loves them he even had a known quote “my money are my fans”

He is well known for his work of “Fiammetta” which means little flame, "Demo Afe“, and “Chirash” which got around 4 million views on YouTube. He also made amazing music work including "Yene Akal" and "Sela bey". “Sela bey” had become the sauce of weddings in Ethiopia. Jacky Gosee speaks the meaning of “Sela bey” as “Be happy and stop worrying”."...

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WHAT DOES "SELA BEY" MEAN IN JACKIE GOSEE'S SONG WITH THAT TITLE?
The lyrics  for Jackie Gosee's song  "Sela Bey" can be found at https://ethiozeima.com/2011/11/15/sela-bey-gossaye-kelemu-jacky/. Two of the tags for that song are "amharic lyrics" and "amharic song lyrics".  However, Google translate gives no results for requests to translate these lyrics from Amharic to English (or any other language). Why is that?

In 2018 Ka Ge, a commenter on the discussion thread for the official YouTube video of Jackie Gosee's song "Selah Bey"  wrote 

"Anyone know what sela means... this is the second sone I've heard it in. I speak Amharic fairly well for someone that's foreign born but I have no idea what it means... my father didn't know either lol"
-end of quote-

If the word "Selah" and "Bey" are standard words in Amharic, why do Amharic speakers not know what these words mean?

Are "sela" and "bey" standard words in an Ethiopian language or Ethiopian language/s other than Amharic? If so, what Ethiopian language/s are they are part of and what are their standard meanings in that language or those languages?

And if "sela" and "bey" are standard words in an Ethiopian language, are they two separate words, or are they always used together?  And if these words are standard parts of an Ethiopian language, were/are they also given vernacular meanings by Ethiopians or were/are these words only given a particular vernacular meanings for Jackie Gosee's hit song "Sela Bey"?

In https://habeshaentertainment.blogspot.com/2014/07/jacky-gosee.html , Jacky Gosee said "Sela Bey" means "Be happy and stop worrying. If Gosee came up with his  meaning "be happy and stop worrying" for the words "Sela Bey", the source for the meaning he conferred on those words (or at least the first word "sela") probably came from the Biblical word "selah". According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selah
"Selah" ....is a word used 74 times in the Hebrew Bible—seventy-one times in the Psalms and three times in the Book of Habakkuk.^[1] The meaning of the word is not known...It is probably either a liturgico-musical mark or an instruction on the reading of the text, something like "stop and listen." ...

That Wikipedia page cautions that "the word "selah" shouldn't be confused with the word "sela" "which means "rock", or in an adjectival form, "like a rock", i.e.: firm, hard, heavy.)"...

"Sela" is sometimes given as a  first name for females in the United States (and probably elsewhere). And "Bey"  is an Ottoman Turkish word that is used as a title for "chieftain" and is also used as a last name (for instance, by African Americans who are members of the Moorish Science Temple).

Then again, perhaps Jackie Gosee meant that the song "Sela Bey" and not the words "Selah Bey" mean "be happy and stop worrying". Maybe "Sela Bey" is just the name for the woman who is featured in his love song with that title.

While questions and confusion about the title "Sela Bey" and/or the meaning/s of the words "Selah Bey" don't detract from the merits of that song, it would be nice if these questions are answered.

Ethiopians, please help a sister out by responding to these questions with information about the words "selah" and "bey" in your country. Thanks in advance.

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This concludes Part I of this pancocojams series on Jackie Gosee's song "Sela Bey".

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