Share: The Nile Project

Mina and Meklit Share at Wolff Olins NY

We couldn’t be more excited to kick off our collaboration with The Nile Project, a cross-cultural initiative that brings together musicians from the Nile countries to perform along the river and around the world. It’s the brainchild of Meklit Hadero, an Ethiopian-American singer-songwriter, and Mina Girgis, an Egyptian ethnomusicologist. The pair joined Wolff Olins in our New York office recently, to share their story so far.

The two first met at a concert and later re-connected at a San Francisco bar. With their backgrounds in music, activism, and education, and their ties to the Nile region, they soon sketched out plans for the project. They realized that though the people of East Africa’s Nile cultures have shared millenia of history, today they know very little about each other and have few opportunities to peacefully interact.

At the intersection of culture and ecology, the Nile Project is intended to bring people of the river together, through a mutual exchange of stories, sound, music, and mythology. At the same time, Mina and Meklit hope the project can engage disapora communities and potentially create an interesting model for other areas, like the Amazon. In Mina’s words, this will be a “musical initiative with measurable impact.”

Meklit has been awarded a TED Senior Fellowship with the Nile Project as her main focus. And she and Mina recently raised over $10,000 on Kickstarter. With the funding, they’ll soon take a scouting trip to East Africa, to connect with musicians from the region and choose participants for the Nile Project ensemble. 

Watch this space for updates on their progress and our work together!  

 Check out other WONY Shares HERE.