Teddy Afro’s Etorika album shook the land of Ethiopia with a frequency that resonated with millions of people almost instantaneously. The album did not simply become popular—it struck a psychological, political, and emotional nerve across the country and throughout the diaspora because it was composed with such vigor and veracity, both lyrically and musically. It reflected what many Ethiopians have been overburdened by: years and tears of accumulated trauma from bad governance, ethnic conflict, displacement, extrajudicial arrests, killings, censorship, and bloodshed on a level many feel they have never witnessed before, nor that has been recorded in Ethiopian history as it has under the leadership of Abiye Ahmed and his diabolical Prosperity Party. The people have made it clear that they want him to step down.
For generations, the green, yellow, and red Ethiopian tricolor represented a shared national identity that transcended region, language, and ethnicity. Today, many Ethiopians believe that open expressions of Ethiopian nationalism in Addis Ababa increasingly carry political risk. Citizens have described scrutiny, intimidation, and harassment surrounding the display of the Ethiopian flag on clothing, bumper stickers, businesses, public celebrations, and cultural gatherings, while Oromo political symbolism has become increasingly visible throughout institutional and official spaces in the capital, as well as through the remapping and rezoning of regions to absorb territories under the Oromo region. The intimidation is real, and the people of Addis Ababa silently watched as the PP replaced the national flag and regional symbols with the Oromo flag, one public installation at a time. One can speculate why there would be a need to increase the number of citizens who identify as Oromo, so that, whenever convenient, they can socially engineer an outcome that benefits their OLF agenda by using Article 39 as a joker for their ethno-political agenda..
Ethiopia has experienced wars, invasions, dynastic struggles, and internal conflicts throughout its long history, stretching back through the Axumite and Mesafint periods, warring with the Sultans of the East, and resisting colonizers and neo-colonial invaders in the modern era. However, these past few years under the Abiye-led PP have increasingly been described as uniquely devastating because of both the scale and nature of the destruction inflicted upon civilians. Modern warfare technologies, drone strikes targeting civilian areas, intentional communication blackouts imposed on populations, mass displacement, and highly militarized internal conflict have created levels of civilian fear and national psychological exhaustion that many people believe the country has never experienced in this form before. For many citizens, the crisis no longer feels like isolated political instability, but like the unraveling of the nation itself.
The entire album is powerful, but the song at the center of this discussion is “Das Tal.”
To understand why the album spread so rapidly, people must first understand that Teddy Afro has been able to articulate in his music, in a lyrically complex way, the sentiment felt by his multi-generational fan base. He has, in the past, similarly been pushed under the veil of censorship and experienced resistance from the EPRDF as well. However, this album, Etorika, is composed and lyricalized to vent and capture the sentiment on a level that has caused the Abiy-led PP to react with mass arrests and order private and public restrictions/prohibitions against the song being played on radios because they understand the depth of truth the songs carry and the guilt they evoke.
Since the installation of Abiye-led PP, significant parts of Ethiopia remain under severe instability and conflict. International travel advisories from governments such as the United States and Canada continue to warn against travel across multiple regions due to armed conflict, insecurity, kidnappings, civil unrest, communications disruptions, and violence. The Amhara region, in particular, has experienced ongoing attacks from the Federal Army and has become part of daily civilian life. Drone attacks, mass displacement, interrogations, interrupted education on a scale in which 2.5 million students are out of school, economic hardship, and fear have become normalized realities for many communities and are directed at civilians by the Abiye Ahmed-led Federal Army. Other regions continue to experience violence in shifting pockets throughout the country.
While much of the nation has been under constant attack, Addis Ababa has experienced a different kind of pressure. For years, many people outside the capital increasingly viewed Addis as living inside a bubble—watching the country unravel from a distance, one town at a time, while convincing themselves the instability would remain deep in the rural areas “over there.” Meanwhile, residents of Addis Ababa have also been subject to a healthy portion of tension: surveillance, political intimidation, displacement, suppression, arrests, fear of speaking openly, and growing anxiety beneath the appearance of ordinary city life, and even there Amharas have been disproportionately targeted.
One of the deepest tensions inside Addis Ababa concerns identity itself. Addis Ababa has historically been viewed by many Ethiopians as a city belonging to all Ethiopians, regardless of ethnicity or region. But under the current Prosperity Party administration led by Abiy Ahmed, many citizens increasingly believe the city has become a battleground over political symbolism, ethnic power, and national identity. Critics accuse the government of carrying out politically motivated harassment, intimidation, extrajudicial arrests, and suppression against journalists, activists, historians, opposition voices, and ordinary citizens for something as simple as asserting or expressing their national identity. Countless people remain in prison without any court date on the books.
Nothing reflects this tension more intensely than the battle over the Ethiopian flag.
For generations, the green, yellow, and red Ethiopian tricolor represented a shared national identity that transcended region, language, and ethnicity. Today, many Ethiopians believe that open expressions of Ethiopian nationalism in Addis Ababa increasingly carry political risk. Citizens have described scrutiny, intimidation, and harassment surrounding the display of the Ethiopian flag on clothing, bumper stickers, businesses, public celebrations, and cultural gatherings, while Oromo political symbolism has become increasingly visible throughout institutional and official spaces in the capital, as well as through the remapping and rezoning of regions to absorb territories under the Oromo region. The intimidation is real, and the people of Addis Ababa silently watched as the PP replaced the national flag and regional symbols with the Oromo flag, one public installation at a time. One can speculate why there would be a need to increase the number of citizens who identify as Oromo, so that, whenever convenient, they can socially engineer an outcome that benefits their OLF agenda by using Article 39 for their ethno-political agenda.
National celebrations tied to Ethiopia’s historic identity, particularly commemorations such as the victory of Adwa, have also become deeply politically charged under the current administration. Many Ethiopians argue that traditions which ordinary citizens openly celebrated for decades have increasingly been restricted, controlled, or redirected into tightly managed Prosperity Party-sponsored events and recently constructed museum-centered ceremonies. Critics of the government point to violent confrontations between federal police and civilians during Adwa-related celebrations, accusing security forces of beating, suppressing, and forcibly dispersing citizens who attempted to celebrate longstanding traditions while carrying the Ethiopian flag. For many Ethiopians, these incidents are viewed not simply as clashes over public order, but as part of a broader struggle over history, national memory, identity, and who has the authority to define what it means to be Ethiopian.
To outside observers, debates over flags may appear symbolic or superficial. Inside Ethiopia, however, they represent something far deeper: a struggle over ownership of the country itself, over who belongs, over whose history is being elevated with the use of false narratives and the suppression of recorded history, and whether the idea of Ethiopia still meaningfully exists as one nation.
For many Ethiopians, the green, yellow, and red flag is not merely a political emblem—it is tied to centuries of sacrifice, resistance, survival, and the memory of ancestors who defended the country against foreign invaders, colonial ambitions, and attempts to dismantle Ethiopia’s sovereignty. Generations of Ethiopians fought, bled, and died to preserve a nation that remained independent during an era when much of Africa was carved up and taken over by European colonial powers. Battles such as Adwa are not remembered simply as military victories, but as moments that would shape the trajectory of how Ethiopians understood themselves and their place in African and world history.
That is why many Ethiopians react so emotionally to what they perceive as the erosion, suppression, or politicization of symbols tied to Ethiopian national identity. For critics of the current political order, the issue is not simply about cloth, colors, or ceremony—it is about protecting the historical continuity of a nation built through immense sacrifice by previous generations. Many believe those who casually undermine or dismiss these symbols fail to understand the scale of what earlier generations endured to preserve the country in the first place.
To understand why the issue of the flag carries such emotional force, one must also understand the political restructuring that reshaped Ethiopia beginning in the early 1990s under the TPLF-led EPRDF government. When ethnic federalism was first introduced into the country’s governance, Ethiopia was reorganized into ethnically based regional states referred to as “nations and nationalities,” replacing the older provincial framework many Ethiopians had historically associated with a broader unified national identity. Over time, regional political identities became increasingly institutionalized through ethnic-based governance structures, regional administrations, and separate political symbolism, including regional flags.
Supporters of ethnic federalism viewed the system as a corrective to historical marginalization and a framework for recognizing linguistic, cultural, and ethnic identities within Ethiopia. Critics, however, argue that the system gradually transformed ethnicity into the primary organizing principle of political life, turning identity into a competition for territory, power, representation, and historical legitimacy. Many Ethiopians believe the system slowly evolved from its stated ideals into a mechanism exploited by ethnically driven politicians who organized and mobilized hate narratives, victimhood, and historical resentment as instruments of power, while outright attempting to rewrite history and spread false narratives specifically targeting the Amhara people. History professors and journalists like Tadios Tantu are thrown in jail when they make public statements asserting that Amharas have historically been among the principal defenders of the nation throughout centuries of conflict, invasion, and state formation.
Over time, many Ethiopians came to realize that ethnic federalism has only amplified grievances among neighbors, fragmented national consciousness, and created political conditions where ethnicity itself became weaponized in struggles for state power. The language of “our turn” in political discourse, which the TPLF and PP tossed around like elementary children during recess, left the toys, ‘aka the people,’ torn at the shoulder. Unfortunately, any kind of governance in the wrong hands can only result in polarization and ego-driven propaganda that depletes resources and national unity.
The debate surrounding Article 39 of the constitution—which recognized the right of nations and nationalities to self-determination and secession—remains one of the most controversial political legacies of ethnic federalism. Eritrea ultimately separated from Ethiopia and became its own nation, leaving Ethiopia landlocked and permanently reshaping the geopolitical trajectory of the region using this article from the newly established constitution of the TPLF/EPRDF.
For many Ethiopians critical of the TPLF era, the separation of Eritrea was never viewed as a simple political divorce. Some believe that during the earlier alliance between Meles Zenawi and Isaias Afwerki, when they were in the ‘chaka,’ which translates to the bush, and forming alliances including the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), there was once a broader political understanding or strategic vision that Tigray and Eritrea would remain closely aligned politically and economically following the fall of the Derg. Within that interpretation, the handling of the Assab port and surrounding territorial questions became symbolic of what critics viewed as internal political maneuvering that ultimately weakened Ethiopia’s long-term economic and sovereign position.
After relations between Meles and Isaias collapsed, the political trajectory shifted dramatically. The alliance fractured, Eritrea and Ethiopia became adversaries, and the TPLF increasingly consolidated its control over the Ethiopian state through the EPRDF structure. For many critics of that period, the fallout marked the beginning of a deeper era of mistrust, ethnic polarization, centralized social engineering, human rights violations, and unresolved national fracture whose consequences are still unfolding today.
Particularly in the Amhara region, many Ethiopians believe the human cost has reached catastrophic levels. Communities have experienced repeated violence, displacement, food insecurity, interrupted education, coordinated communication blackouts, and fear tied to drone strikes and military operations. For many critics of the PP, which has its spies and political officials’ tentacles in each region, one of the deepest sources of outrage has been the level of destruction carried out by the federal military apparatus constantly attacking civilians, farmers, local communities, and ordinary citizens rather than functioning as a force of national protection and unity.
It is within this atmosphere that groups such as FANO gained widespread support among many Amharas, as well as support and sympathy from people in other regions, because they are increasingly viewed as a grassroots community response and protective shield against attacks carried out by the Federal Army. In many cases, FANO fighters were reportedly able to disarm members of the Ethiopian Federal Army and seize their equipment, further fueling Abiye Ahmed’s rage and animosity toward the citizens. The Abiy Ahmed PP Federal Army also has many camps where they detain and torture citizens in an effort to interrogate them without justification, making assumptions that every citizen is FANO. This warmongering against civilians has led to the torture and mass murder of innocent civilians in the Amhara region and has been documented by the Department of State.
Fano is composed not of career soldiers, but of ordinary civilians, farmers, youth, and community members responding to what they perceive as a threat to wipe out the Amhara ethnic group. The soldiers at these campsites have openly admitted that they have been commissioned to wipe out the Amhara ethnic group and that the region would be absorbed under the Oromo ‘nations and nationalities.’
For many Ethiopians critical of the current government, the Prosperity Party era did not simply deepen Ethiopia’s existing fractures—it represented the moment those fractures violently ruptured in ways that have permanently altered the country’s future.
This is part of what gives Das Tal its emotional force. Many listeners do not hear the song simply as social commentary. They hear it as mourning for a country they believe is being politically, culturally, and psychologically dismantled in real time.
The symbolism behind pitching a tent—“Das Tal”—is rooted in a familiar cultural practice throughout Ethiopia, especially in Addis Ababa, where tents are erected near the home when there has been a death in the family, and people gather for days or weeks to mourn and pay their respects. Teddy Afro transforms that image into a national metaphor. The song asks: Where does one go to mourn when the country itself has died?
That is why his repeated invocation of “Ansaw” hits people so deeply. ‘Ansaw’ means to pick it up. Pick up the flag of our ancestors. Many listeners interpret it not as nostalgia, but as a direct call to pick up the original Ethiopian flag again—the flag many associate with a shared national identity before decades of ethnicized political fragmentation transformed the entire nation into a battleground. The word carries emotional and political weight because it speaks directly to people who feel they have been robbed of their national identity and forced into submission, silence, and erasure.
Part of the emotional force of Etorika also comes from Teddy Afro’s own self-reflection throughout the album. In several lyrics, he references silence, delay, and regret over not speaking sooner. That admission is a testament to those who live in Addis Ababa and thought that silence was their only option. The waiting. The feeling of watching violence, arrests, displacement, killings, instability, and national fracture unfold year after year while assuming that it would only happen to the farmers and country folk—and that somehow Addis Ababa could just go about business as usual. This song takes into account the rude awakening of being under siege.
For many Ethiopians, especially in the diaspora, hearing Teddy finally articulate that regret over remaining silent was like an apology for not rising up sooner. The inevitable harassment and censorship by the PP are burdens many Ethiopians have privately been carrying for years.
The reaction to Etorika only intensified the album’s impact. Reports rapidly spread about pressure surrounding the public playing of songs from the album, fears of arrests tied to gatherings where the music was being played, and intimidation surrounding the circulation of the songs. Bars, restaurants, and public venues were reportedly warned against openly playing Teddy Afro’s music, while many Ethiopians described an atmosphere where even publicly listening to certain songs felt politically charged.
Supporters of Teddy Afro also pointed to reports that individuals connected to him, including members of his professional circle, were detained shortly after the release, reinforcing widespread perceptions that the state immediately recognized the political and emotional power the album had begun generating.
People immediately recognized that the music had touched a nerve powerful enough to create fear within political circles.
And that is the deeper significance of Etorika. Teddy Afro was not singing as a politician, military commander, or activist organization. He was singing as an artist, mourning the death of his country.
When artists echo the unresolved grief and frustrations of their people during moments of national crisis, the connection becomes deeper than fandom. Across Ethiopia’s modern political history, journalists, historians, activists, musicians, and public intellectuals who openly challenged state narratives or spoke against abuses have often faced intimidation, imprisonment, exile, or political targeting. Many Ethiopians therefore viewed Teddy Afro’s willingness to speak so directly—despite the risks—as an act of personal and political sacrifice.
The album carried grief, frustration, regret, memory, anger, longing, and a desire for unity all at once. It gave emotional language to people who felt politically voiceless. For many Ethiopians, Etorika did not create emotion—it released emotion that had already been bubbling under the surface of the nation for years.
"Ansaw!"
