Next year sees the 30th anniversary of The Blue Nile's first work together. Four albums – containing a total of just 33 songs – have followed since. Yet scarcity has served only to intensify love for the band's intensely romantic songs. The Blue Nile are one of modern music's greatest mysteries, as secretive about their plans and status as they are about their painstaking methods. For the first time Allan Brown, a fan from the time of the band's first album in 1983 and friend of the band's composer Paul Buchanan, gets behind the veil to analyse the band's appeal through personal memoir, critical study, access to unreleased recordings and encounters with those who have been central to the strange romantic, melancholy course of The Blue Nile.
The story of the Nile, from the Mountains of the Moon to the Mediterranean. The tale starts with Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke setting out to find the sources of the Nile. It continues with Baker of the Nile and his wife struggling with malaria, and of the famous greeting between Stanley and Livingstone. The book examines the results of their discoveries: the building of the Suez canal; the Khedive Ismail's appointment of Gordon as Governor-General of Sudan; and the story of the last days of Khartoum.
This book is about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam newly being built on the Blue Nile, a transboundary river. Due to rising population and increasing water demand in the Nile basin, major projects raise interest and concern by millions with potential for water conflict. The dam design, reservoir filling policy, operation of the dam, riparian countries response, dam site importance and social impact and economy of the dam are presented in the book.
This book completes a trilogy by the anthropologist Wendy James. It is a case study of how the Uduk-speaking people, originally from the Blue Nile region between the 'north' and the 'south' of Sudan, have been caught up in and displaced by a generation of civil war. Some have responded by defending their nation, others by joining the armed resistance of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, and yet others eventually finding security as international refugees in Ethiopia, and even further afield in countries such as the USA. Sudan's peace agreement of 2005 leaves much uncertainty for the future of the whole country, as conflict still rages in Darfur. The Uduk case shows how people who once lived together now try to maintain links across borders and even continents through modern communications, and where possible recreate their 'traditional' forms of story-telling, music, and song.
I have written this book to tell my survival story: how I managed to avoid death in spite of numerous attempts by government authorities in Ethiopia to arrest and kill me during the Ethiopian Revolution of the 1970s. My political persecution was a consequence of being a member of an opposition group, the Ethiopian People Revolutionary Party (EPRP). My survival story is a testament to the human spirit's ability to overcome seemingly insurmountable adversities. My story is only one of thousands that could be told by Ethiopians who experienced Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam's brutal regime from 1974 to 1991. The Mengistu regime commanded as many as half a million regular soldiers and militiamen. It had a communist ideology and was heavily armed by the former Soviet Union and other communist countries. It is believed that about one million Ethiopians were killed or injured during the Mengistu regime. Thousands of intellectuals, including teachers, students, and other professionals, were gunned down, tortured, and imprisoned. A generation of educated Ethiopians was lost in a span of a few years. The destruction did not end there. Government officials confiscated the properties of countless city dwellers, including businesses and houses. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Ethiopians were displaced from their homes, becoming refugees in the neighboring countries of Sudan, Kenya, Djibouti, and elsewhere. The lives of nearly all Ethiopians were negatively affected by the Mengistu regime, in one way or another. The Mengistu regime was without a doubt one of the harshest in human history. Although this book is not primarily about the Ethiopian revolution that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1974, I have provided a brief historical background about why and how the revolution began, as well as written the story of my own involvement in a literacy campaign promoted by the Mengistu regime. I have also interjected some personal and family stories in the memoir. Finally, I have reflected on the culture and values of the people in the countryside of my home province Gojjam, where I spent two of my three years in hiding. Gizachew Tiruneh, Ph. D. Associate Professor Department of Political Science University of Central Arkansas Conway, Arkansas, USA
Ethiopia has a rich and fascinating cultural heritage structured around water. The River Nile has been seen by many as the most important river in the world, and the secrets of the sources of the Nile and their mysteries have, from the dawn of civilization, attracted philosophers, emperors and explorers searching for answers. The source of the Blue Nile, Gish Abay, is believed to be the outlet of the biblical river Gihon, flowing directly from Paradise, linking this world with Heaven. The holiness of Abay (the Blue Nile) and its source in particular still has an important role in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In the Lake Tana region, there are also numerous other myths, traditions and rituals concerning the river. Several of the island monasteries are incredibly holy, and indigenous practices and sacrifices to the river are still conducted. The most important celebration in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is the Timkat festival, which is an annual commemoration of the importance of baptism. Despite the importance of the River Nile from antiquity to present-day practices and beliefs in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, very little research has been conducted on the cultural and religious aspects of the Blue Nile in general and its source, Gish Abay, and Lake Tana in Ethiopia in particular. This book combines historic sources and new empirical ethnography, presenting parts of this cultural heritage and the traditions of water along the Blue Nile.
The author was invited by the National Geographic Society to join its 1999 expedition, which hoped to be the first to descend the Blue Nile in a single, uninterrupted trip from its source to the Sudan border and its join with the White Nile.
