Outside With the Insider: Music Manager Addis Gessesse
By: Mik Awake

Hanna Gessesse points to a photograph in one of her father’s albums. The photograph was taken last year in Addis Ababa and shows the main stage of the Africa Unite concert, which was the brainchild of her father, Addis. On the giant backdrop behind the stage hangs a larger-than-life mural of a legendary reggae singer.

“That’s Bob Marley,” says Hanna.

At three years old, Hanna is like most children her age. She complains when a certain reporter steals her father for an interview in their backyard. “I want to go with you, Daddy,” she cries. “Daddy, pleeeeease!” But in being able to recognize Bob Marley’s likeness, even when drawn rather crudely as it was on the backdrop, she is definitely unlike most other toddlers her age. But perhaps it’s not so surprising to those who know her father, Addis Gessesse – music manager of Rita Marley and most of the Marley family and man behind last year’s landmark Africa Unite concert. The concert, and the other month-long series of events, saw half-a-million people crowd the streets of Addis Ababa to watch the Marley Family, the I-Threes, Baaba Maal, and Angelique Kidjo perform in celebration of Bob Marley’s 60th Birthday.

One of the biggest and most star-studded African concerts the continent has ever seen started out, six years ago, as little more than a vague dream in the mind of Addis Gessesse.

Addis Gessesse took a long and winding road through the music business, a road that included as much struggle as good fortune. A road that begins with his life as a struggling immigrant student from Ethiopia and shepherd of his younger brothers in Chicago, then to life as an established entity in Jamaica and New York, working with acts like Ziggy Marley and Earth, Wind, and Fire, and then full-circle back to the extravagant concert in Addis Ababa earlier this year.