With a debut EP on the way, the Ethiopian singer Blén is ready to introduce her vision to the world.courtesy of Blén
Blén was only a child when she turned the aisle of a long bus ride to her mother’s hometown in southern Ethiopia into an impromptu stage.
It was the time when Aster Aweke — the “Queen of Ethiopian Pop” — had released a new album, and the bus journey was soundtracked by songs from the project.
At some point, Blén, already the designated performer at family gatherings, got up and sang for a bus full of strangers.
The bus broke into applause.
Looking back, she suspects the passengers probably found the whole thing amusing. “I was some little kid doing their thing,” she laughs as she recounts the story to OkayAfrica. “They were probably making fun of me.”
Few would be laughing now. Today, at 27, Blén is stepping into a dream she has been incrementally moving toward since childhood. With “Sèkèn,” the title track and first single from her upcoming debut EP, already out, and the haunting “Tèkètèlègn” following behind it, she is preparing to release the six-song project in the coming months.
For her, this moment has felt long in the making. “It feels surreal,” she says. “There’s a dream that I had that I’m actually achieving.”
Music was a calling Blén felt early. She grew up surrounded by it, with cassettes of Ethiopian artists around the house and compilation DVDs of Western pop videos she played on repeat, especially Beyoncé and Shakira. At family coffee ceremonies, Blén, as the designated entertainer, sang and danced whenever relatives asked. So when her uncle-in-law, a musician himself, learned that she was already writing poetry and song lyrics at age 12, he gifted her a guitar. Not long after, she was recording songs in a studio.
In the years that followed, Blén spent her summers saving up for guitar, piano, and vocal lessons, even as she followed a more traditional academic path that eventually led to a degree in computer engineering. Through it all, music remained the clearest through line.
“Music validated whatever point of life I was at that moment…as if someone is already telling your side of the story for you.”
“There’s a dream that I had that I’m actually achieving.”courtesy of Blén
That long apprenticeship stretched further when Blén graduated from university in 2020 and began building Bana Records, the label she co-founded as a home for the kind of Ethiopian-rooted, globally minded music she wanted to see more of — and eventually create herself. Before releasing her own work, she wanted to put the right infrastructure in place: the kind of system, tea, and support she had long understood an artist needed.
Even as she jumped into the business side of music, the music itself never stopped being created in parallel; Blén said most of the music on her upcoming EP, Sèkèn, came together after Bana Records was already underway.
“I feel like that kind of tied my entire journey together, and that reflects that era for me,” she says of the music one can expect on the EP.
All those years of work, both creative and strategic, help explain why Blén’s music now feels so assured and ready-made. More than her backstory, it is the music itself that makes Blén feel ready: emotionally direct, rooted in Ethiopian influences, and delivered with a confidence that gives even her softer songs real presence.
For example, there is nothing tentative about “Tèkètèlègn.” It is a love song in which a woman asks her man to trust her love and instincts. Her voice soars almost angelically over the song. With lyrics by her good friend (and huge star!) Esubalew Yetayew, the track leans into the layered, double-meaning lyricism Blén associates with Ethiopian songwriting traditions. Its striking cinematic video, creatively directed by Blén, beautifully recreating frames and tributes to iconic Ethiopian women.
She approaches both music and image-making with the goal of making work that people can see themselves in. “That’s one of my major priorities when it comes to my artistry. I want to tell stories that are relatable for people.”
If Sèkèn is the project that gathers the last five years of her life spent building Bana Records into one place, then “Tèkètèlègn” is one of its clearest signals yet that Blén is arriving exactly as she intended: as an artist finally stepping into the creative career she has been building for years.
