Actress, composer, vocalist, dancer, and harpist Asnaketch Worku is also known as Asnaqètch Wèrqu. She was born in 1935 in Sidist Kilo, a community in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Her mother died during her childhood when she was three, and she did not know her father. Worku had one older sister, Elfinesh Marefia. A godmother reared them. Much of their youthful life was spent attending plays and concerts. Asnaketch eventually bought a krar, an ancient harp with six strings, for 25 cents and taught herself to play the instrument. She later began performing with it at the local bars and was invited to play it at cabarets.
Worku’s career in the arts began with her debut in Ye Fikir Chora, a theatrical drama translated as “Rays of Love,'” at the City Hall Theatre in Menelik II Square, Addis Ababa, in 1952. Her talent and passion for music led her to study voice with the Austrian composer and conductor Prof. Franz Zelwecker, the first director of the Haile Selassie I National Theater. She also sang Ethiopian songs and was accompanied by the Yared Modern Orchestra.
Worku’s style of singing, characterized by a bold and truthful passion, was a source of controversy in Ethiopia during the 1950s. In a society where women were expected to be docile and subservient to men, her unabashed expression of love, even for a married man, was seen as a challenge to societal norms. Her refusal to conform to the stereotypical female performer role in an ultra-conservative community at the time demonstrated her resilience, courage, and artistic integrity. She also owned a nightclub during this period in Dejach Wube, one of the oldest communities in Addis Ababa, further showcasing her defiance of societal expectations. In 1959, Worku served as an actress and dancer in the Haile Selassie I theatre troupe and oversaw cultural projects at the National Theater.
In 1963, she took on the principal role of Desdemona, the wife of the jealous Moorish general Othello, in William Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello, marking a significant milestone in her career. While most of Worku’s performances were sung in the Amharic and Oromo languages, she did perform in seven Romantic languages, including Italian. In 1974, the Philips-Ethiopia label produced Worku’s first album, Krar songs, by Asnaketch Worku. Her songs were popular but were taken off the market during the 1974 rebellion that toppled the government of Emperor Haile Selassie. Despite that setback, in 1975, she released her album, Asnakech, a traditional Ethiopian music playing the krar.
In 1987, Worku, who defiantly wore earrings showing deposed Emperor Selassie, toured Canada, Europe, and the United States for 16 weeks on behalf of the Ethiopian military government, thanking foreign nations for their assistance during the years of Ethiopia’s famine. In 1989, she retired from the National Theater after 30 years. Worku’s last recordings, however, were in Germany in 1995, with the CD Ende Jerusalem.
Asnaketch Worku, one of the most cherished Ethiopian artistic performers of the 20th Century and who had been suffering from complex arthritic complications, died on September 14, 2011, at Bete Zata Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She was 76.
