Friday, June 26, 2020

YouTube video of Ethiopian Tigrayan singer Ephrem Amare- 'Sey (with information about Tigrayan people)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part I of a two part pancocojams series on 
Ethiopian Tigrayan singer Ephrem Amare's 2018 hit love song " 'Sey".

Part I provides information about the Tigrayan people of Ethiopia and Eritrea and information about the Tigrinya language.


Part I also showcases the 2018 official YouTube video of the love song " 'Sey " by  Ethiopian Tigrayan singer Ephrem Amare.


Click for https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-global-reach-of-ethiopian-tigrayan.html Part II of this pancocojams series. Part II showcases the 2018 official YouTube video of the love song " 'Sey " by  Ethiopian Tigrayan singer Ephrem Amare. Part II also provides some comments from that video's discussion thread. Most of those comments document some of the global reach of that song.

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


All copyrights remain with their owners.


Thanks to 
Ephrem Amare for his music and 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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INFORMATION ABOUT TIGRAYANS
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigrayans#:~:text=The%20Tigrayans%20(Tigrinya%3A%20%E1%89%B0%E1%8C%8B%E1%88%A9),was%20spoken%20in%20late%20antiquity.

The Tigrayans (Tigrinyaተጋሩ) or Tigrinyas (Tigrinyaብሄር ትግርኛ) are an ethnolinguistic group indigenous to the highlands of Eritrea and the Tigray Region of Ethiopia.[13][14][15] They speak the Tigrinya language, a direct descendant of the Ge’ez language that was spoken in late antiquity.[16][17]

In Eritrea they comprise about 55% of the population, i.e. above three million people (and additionally half a million in the diaspora), and in Ethiopia there are about 4.5 million Tigrayans, according to the 2007 census, most of them in the Tigray Region.[18][19][20]
[...]

HISTORY
...According to Ethiopian traditions, the Tigrayan nobility; i.e. that of the former Kingdom of Tigray, trace their ancestry to the legendary king Menelik I, the child born of the queen of Sheba and King Solomon as do the priests of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (Ge'ez ካህን kāhin). Menelik I would become the first king of the Solomonic dynasty of rulers of Ethiopia that ended only with the deposing of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974."...

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INFORMATION ABOUT THE TIGRINYA LANGUAGE
From 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigrinya_language
"The Tigrinya language (also spelled Tigrigna) is a Semitic language most widely spoken in Eritrea and in the northern part of Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, Tigrinya is spoken in the Tigray region.[3] It is also spoken by groups of emigrants from these regions.

Tigrinya (along with Arabic) was one of Eritrea's official languages during its short-lived federation with Ethiopia; in 1958 it was replaced by the Southern Ethiopic language Amharic prior to its annexation. Upon Eritrea's independence in 1991, Tigrinya retained the status of working language in the country, the only state in the world to date to recognize Tigrinya on a national level.
SPEAKERS
...Tigrinya is the most widely spoken language in Eritrea (see Demographics of Eritrea) and the fourth most spoken language in Ethiopia after Amharic, Somali and Oromo. It is also spoken by large immigrant communities around the world, in countries including Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. In Australia, Tigrinya is one of the languages broadcast on public radio via the multicultural Special Broadcasting Service.[7]
Tigrinya dialects differ phonetically, lexically, and grammatically.[8] No dialect appears to be accepted as a standard,"...

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SHOWCASE VIDEO - Ephrem Amare - 'Sey (Official Video) | 'ሰይ - Ethiopian Music 2018



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ADMAS MUSIC, September 7, 2018
-snip-
Statistics as of June 26,2020 at 10:51 AM EDT
Total # of views - 25,937,462
Total # of likes- 64K
Total # of dislikes-6.4K
Total # of comments-7,186
-snip-
Update: June 29, 2020


Several commenters on the discussion thread for Ephrem Amare's video " 'Sey" wrote that this was the East African YouTube video with the most views as of June 2020. However, I've found other contemporary YouTube videos of East African singers with more views such as  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsfVYQ8zd4M  Ethiopian singer 
Abby Lakew - Yene Habesha | የኔ አበሻ published in 2015 that has more than 46 million views and such as Tanzanian singer Diamond Platinumz's 2018 video "Kwangwaru" that has more than 65 million views. That is just one of Diamond Platinumz's videos that have more views than Ephrem Amare's " 'Sey". Of course, this doesn't diminish Amare's accomplishment.  

  
-snip- 
Here's the only information I've found online about Ephrem Amare:
From https://peoplepill.com/people/ephrem-amare/
"Quick Facts
Intro - 
Tigrayan Singer, songwriter 
From - Ethiopia
Birth - 1986, Ethiopia"

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I haven't found any online definition of the word " 'sey". That title of Ephrem Amare's hit 2018 love song is always written with a hyphen. I wonder if "[sey" is a form of the 
.Tigrinya term "asey asey". I found this term in the titles for these two YouTube videos of Eritrean weddings:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFCCiAwN_mQ&t=257s

Asey Asey
Zanta Studio,Jan 26, 2016
eritrean wedding

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9B4BXRkKOo
asey asey new eritrean wedding music 2018 by yohannes gebre(john)
Zara Entertainment, November 24, 2018
-snip-
I'd love it if someone would share what  " 'sey" means and what "asey asey" means. Thanks in advance.

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This concludes Part I of this two part pancocojams series on 
Ephrem Amare- 'Sey .

Thanks for visiting pancocojams.

Visitor comments are welcome.

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