Zena

​​ZENA – comprised of keyboardist-producer Yohan Kebede and bassist-producer Menelik Mulugeta Claffey, known mononymously as Menelik – is breathing new life into Ethiopian music with a London edge. Meaning “legacy” in Amharic, ZENA is building its own while building upon the traditions established by legendary Ethiopian musicians.

ZENA’s music is rooted in the Ethio-jazz that wafted through Yohan and Menelik’s childhood homes like the warmth and sacredness of etan, Ethiopian aromatic frankincense, while upholding the vibrancy and innovation that’s characteristic of the London scene both were born out of. It’s mystical yet unorthodox, also pulling from alternative R&B, trip-hop, dub and psychedelic influences. It’s soulful yet sexy – rather taboo for Ethiopian traditionalists but tempting for fans of D’Angelo and Marvin Gaye.

While Yohan discovered and found inspiration from Motown artists during secondary school, he has spent the last nine years performing Afrobeat, highlife and jazz as the keyboardist and synth player for the London-based octet Kokoroko. Kokoroko released its sophomore album Tuff Times Never Last last July, garnering critical acclaim from The Guardian, The Times, Notion, Pitchfork, PAPER Magazine, The Fader and more, and embarked on an international tour, including the band’s largest headline show to date at the O2 Academy Brixton in London. And to this day, you can catch him playing traditional jazz every Sunday at mu in London with Rio Kai and Luke McCarthy. Psychedelic rock pioneer Jimi Hendrix initially informed Menelik’s music taste, but his love for jazz burgeoned when he learned to play bass at age 12. Since then, the elusive musician has performed with alternative-jazz singer Divine Earth (fka muva of Earth) on her first EP align with Nature’s Intelligence, harpist Alina Bzhezhinska and keyboardist and flautist Brian Jackson on the Alice Coltrane Celebration Project, and pianist and composer Bill Laurance. In 2024, Menelik was spotlighted as a Future Mover in Jazzwise.

The two were silent admirers of each other’s work. Yohan noticed fellow London musicians put #menelik on Instagram videos from their gigs, and Menelik remembers watching Yohan tour with Yussef Dayes in 2018. When Yohan needed a bassist to fill in for his regular Sunday gig in late 2023, Menelik stepped in. “I’ve always had the desire to create something for myself, with someone else. And that just felt like a bingo moment,” Yohan says. Weeks later, the two began regularly jamming out to covers of Hailu Mergia, Mulatu Astatke and Admas at Yohan’s warehouse apartment in Hackney, graduating to gigs at hi-fi bars and intimate venues and eventually four sold-out headlining shows – packed houses of young Ethiopians and Eritreans chanting every word to the tunes that raised them, too.

ZENA has emerged during a time when younger generations of the diaspora have felt collectively called back home through music, food, dance, language, fashion and art. And while music from West and South Africa has broken into the Western mainstream and reshaped global pop, ZENA is drawing the world’s attention to Ethiopian music and highlighting East Africa within the larger African music conversation.

“Our generation is the first group of Ethiopians and Eritreans en masse to be born outside of the countries, and we’re becoming more and more visible in different parts of the world, but I don’t see that in the art we’re making,” Yohan says. “Hailu Mergia, Mulatu Astatke, all of them were reflecting where they were at the time and taking something forward. We got to do the same thing.”

ZENA formally introduced itself to the world by releasing a cover of Admas’ 1984 cult classic “Anchi Bale Gamé” as their standalone debut single, which arrived in November via Brownswood Recordings. ZENA modernizes the snappy, synth-funk texture of Admas’ rendition of Mahmoud Ahmed’s 1980 original composition with a downtempo, electro-R&B vibe, continuing the legacy of this song. OkayAfrica described ZENA’s “Anchi Bale Gamé” as “a spiritually satisfying communication between two maestros of sound.”

“We have this push and pull where he’s always like, ‘Don’t overthink it, man.’ And I have this thing of like, ‘I know it sounds good, but what’s the bigger picture?’ That push-and-pull creates a perfect balance that you hear on the record,” says Yohan.

ZENA’s debut EP TEMESGEN, which is out March 20, 2026, is named after the Amharic word meaning “to be thankful,” and such gratitude for Yohan and Menelik’s shared heritage permeates throughout the project. Across six tracks, ZENA expertly fuses long-established Ethiopian melodies with forward-thinking Western instrumentation. Hand-clapping rhythms and muffled chanting call for eskista, the traditional Ethiopian dance with expressive, accelerated movements of the shoulders and neck, on the first single “My Love Your Love,” where Menelik’s thumping bass groove reminds Yohan of something you’d hear on D’Angelo’s Voodoo. Menelik later manipulates the bass to sound like the krar, an Ethiopian bowl-shaped lyre, on “Kazanchis.” The second single, “It’s You (Ante Neh)” featuring South London-based, Ethiopian Eritrean R&B singer Meron T, demonstrates ZENA’s Ethio-pop sensibilities, often overshadowed by Ethio-jazz when recalling Ethiopia’s golden age of music. “It was important to reference that sound and create an earworm that sounds Ethiopian but also could be a Khruangbin sound,” Yohan says. And the final titular track serves as the tizita, the Amharic word for “nostalgia” and a popular musical genre that’s often referred to as “the blues of Ethiopia” because it evokes bittersweet memories from the past.

By carrying the tizita tradition of Mulatu Astatke, Mahmoud Ahmed and their Éthiopiques forebearers, Yohan and Menelik are establishing through ZENA that they’re equipped to take up their torch and continue stoking the flames of the world’s contemporary interest in vintage Ethiopian music. “I hope it’s music that lasts with people. I hope it’s music that people come back to and connect with in their own way. That’s the beauty of instrumental music – it’s not someone necessarily telling you a story. It attaches itself to your own memories in a way that you might not expect,” says Menelik.

After performing nearly a dozen gigs in their native London over the past year, ZENA performed in Ethiopia for the first time in January during the bustling diaspora season at Fabrica. With upcoming sets at The Jazz Café on February 20 (opening for Somali funk/disco band Dur-Dur), Brick Lane Jazz Festival in April and Cross The Tracks Festival in May, ZENA is determined to take the timeless sonics of Ethiopia beyond the motherland.

Written by Heran Mamo