Discover: After Restarting From Zero, Giday Is Thinking Global

When Giday returned to Addis Ababa in 2019, he had already spent years building a life in music in Boston. He had helped build and run a studio and creative space, sat across from label representatives and watched artists who recorded there go on to get signed. One, he says, even signed under Kanye West.

None of that mattered when he got home.

“When I first moved back, I had to really humble myself. Nobody cares,” he tells OkayAfrica over the phone. “Whatever you’ve done up there, you have to come here and prove yourself.”

So Giday started from scratch. He began producing and connecting with the local scene. He even joined a band playing weekly hotel gigs, earning far less than he had in the U.S.

“I used to send money back from the States, and now I’m here playing for that.”

He adds: “I had to come here and start from zero.

Seven years later, that willingness to start over sits at the heart of Giday’s latest chapter. Since his Afrofusion album ORIGINAL dropped in June, it has introduced him to a new wave of listeners while reconnecting longtime fans with an artist who has spent more than a decade rebuilding and finding his place in Ethiopia’s changing music scene. Giday calls the album both a reintroduction and his “origin story,” but it also marks the point from which he hopes to take his music–and Ethiopia–to a much bigger stage.

“I don’t mind restarting again,” he says. “I’m also introducing myself to me.”

Starting Over, Again

Music had been part of Giday’s life long before he imagined it as a career. Growing up in Addis, he memorized songs and picked apart the instruments he heard on records. Michael Jackson was an early favorite, alongside the West African music his parents played at home, R&B, and reggae. At school, he sang during weekly chapel, although he sometimes tried to hide his voice.

“Back then it wasn’t considered cool,” he says. “I used to hide my voice just to be like the other guys.”

When Giday left Ethiopia for Boston at 17, however, music was not the plan. He enrolled at Northeastern University to study civil engineering, but found himself increasingly distracted by the thing he had always been drawn to. For him, music arrived during a dark time, and reggae and conscious music saved his life.

“I was going through a dark time when I found music,” he says. “It was those stories and messages I used to tell myself that got me through.”

He began quietly visiting music schools without telling his parents. When he walked into the New England School of Art and saw the studios, something clicked. “I was like, ‘Ah, this is home, man.’”

While studying digital audio and media production, Giday and his friends opened a studio and clothing space that became a gathering point for young artists. They recorded musicians, hosted events and dealt with label representatives. Giday calls the experience “another university.”

When the business eventually fell apart, Giday was already due back in Ethiopia for his younger brother’s wedding. A planned three-month stay stretched into much more. Eventually, he returned to Boston for his belongings and moved home.

A Scene in Transition

The Ethiopian music scene he returned to looked very different from the one he sees today. Giday remembers established artists holding much of the power, less collaboration, and limited space for someone making music partly in English. As he rebuilt his own audience, a younger generation was beginning to push through.

“We were literally that transition,” he says of his peers. “You get to see the stuff that you didn’t have coming up, and you get to be that for the next ones.”

Today, he agrees that the Ethiopian creative scene is enjoying a renaissance. Artists are collaborating more freely, while younger musicians experiment with new sounds and local instruments. Visual production has grown alongside the music. The Maranata Tegegne-directed video for his lead single, “This Kind Love,” reflects that increasingly ambitious creative ecosystem.

“When I dropped my album, I think five other albums dropped,” Giday says. “That’s never happened.” 

Expanding Ethiopia Outward

ORIGINAL sits squarely inside that moment. Giday says he considered roughly 40 to 50 songs before settling on the final 16, cutting tracks whose sounds had aged or whose messages no longer reflected where he was. “I wanted to finish telling the story,” he says.

The album features Ethiopian artists — local and diaspora — including Yohana, Sami Dan, Dibekulu, Adey, and Skat Nati, while also reaching beyond the country. Malawian rapper Sagonjah appears on opening track “Griot,” bringing together two artists who see storytelling as central to their work.

“I wanted people to be like, ‘What is the griot? What is that?’ and search and look it up, and then understand that I’m a storyteller,” he says. “It was me rebranding myself but also telling people what I’m about.”

Now he wants to take Ethiopia with him onto a much bigger stage. Having spent much of his life moving between Ethiopia and the U.S., he believes he can make music that speaks to Ethiopian listeners while remaining accessible to audiences elsewhere.

“I’m trying to represent Ethiopia but on a global stage. I don’t think anybody’s really done that yet, he says. “I think that’s my place.” 

His Afrofusion sound reflects that position between worlds, combining Ethiopian languages and influences with English and the global sounds that have shaped him.

“I see the vision. I see the pathway,” Giday says. “It’s just being consistent and living up to it.”

At its core, ORIGINAL is also about staying true to the instincts that brought him this far. Giday says the title refers to his commitment to authenticity and his own origin story. The album closes with “Abqitwal,” which he translates as “it’s done” or “it’s over.” For Giday, the song captures how he is now leaving old struggles behind and turning toward whatever comes next.

“That would be the song to definitely say where I’m at, where I’m trying to go,” he says. “Leaving the past in the past and creating a new energy.”

That next chapter comes with its own danger. These days, Giday’s name is buzzing in Addis. The same city where he once had to start from zero can now make it easy to feel as though he has already arrived.

He is determined not to believe it.

“I haven’t even touched, scratched the surface,” he says. He thinks back to Boston, where working multiple jobs taught him a level of hustle he does not want to lose.

“I don’t ever want to get complacent,” he says. “I haven’t done anything yet.”