Emptiness, melancholy, nostalgia; doom and gloom, morbid musings; heartache or homesickness: such is the stock in trade of the misery and mournful memories expressed by the song Tezeta - Ethiopia's majestic hymn to the blues. Etymologically, the word itself means memory, nostalgia, and several Ethiopian authors have used Tezeta as the title for their memoirs. For Ethiopians, it is the Tezeta genre that seems to capture the essence of the blues.