"Kicked out", "kicked off" ....?

At 10:40pm my friend set me a txt msg asking, 'Did Beyonce just get kicked out of Ethiopia?' 10 minutes later I was on my laptop and on the phone with her trying to figure out where she got that from. We couldn't confirm that she was kicked out, but it seems she wowed the 5000 people in Addis that could afford her show.

Meh. Not my kinda gig. Each to his own, but of the story, this made me cringe

Beyonce's opening act, rapper Ludacris, also got a lukewarm reception Saturday.

"Rap music doesn't suit Ethiopia," said local music promoter Michael Melake. "Ethiopians need a melody.

"Rap music is all about the message and we don't identify with that," he said. "It's all about the black American experience, and we don't relate to that."

Eeek!

Beterefe gin I wonder if Anita Powell has ever been to Ethiopia, or how much time she's spent in Ethiopia.

Some 5,000 adoring fans in Ethiopia — a country normally unimpressed by Western music — turned out to see Beyonce. In this country, even teens tend to be loyal to music in the national language, Amharic.

In a country of 70 million people, surely it can't be that hard to come up with 5000 molqaqa, Ethiopian raised, English-only-speaking (or pretending) fans ... if not people who appreciate a balance of world music. If you round up all the kids from the private and international schools inkuan, you can beat that number.