The Swedish vocalist with Ethiopian roots, Sofia Jernberg, and the London pianist Alexander Hawkins have entitled their first album 2024 ‘Musho’, just like their duo. Musho is a word from Amharic, a northern Ethiopian language, and translates into German as ‘sad song, lament’. It is also the quiet, rather introspective moments that this extraordinary duo tries to capture with their music. The two often play traditional songs of different stylistic, aesthetic and geographical provenance, which originate not only from Ethiopian, but also from Armenian, Swedish and English. In their anticipatory interplay, they explore their very own imaginary folklore; in their interpretations, they aim to be subtle and veiled, avoiding a direct approach in order to reveal the respective core of their songs in a roundabout way.
