Ethiopian pianist Samuel Yirga has been named among the 50 Africa rising stars by the prestigious Paris-based the Africa Report Magazine. According to August–September 2014 edition of the magazine, Samuel is named along with 50 other African rising talent. Through its extensive surveys of correspondents and contacts, the magazine announced it drew up the longlist which included young innovators, financiers, and businesspeople.
Samuel was described by the magazine as piano prodigy who arrived late and made up for lost time. “His hands-deemed too small to play the piano by one music teacher-fly across the keys as he switches from a traditional jazz riff to an improvisation on a theme from the golden age of Ethiopian music,” reads the Africa Report magazine.
Samuel is now a regular fixture at Mama’s Kitchen, a cocktail lounge on Addis Ababa’s fashionable Bole Road. “He came to music late, first touching a musical instrument at the age of 16, but is now hailed as the great new hope of Ethiopian jazz. Samuel’s first solo album, Guzo, or ‘journey’ in Amharic, met with critical and commercial acclaim,” said Elissa Jobson the magazine’s Ethiopia correspondent.
Also making the top 50 were the Oscar wining Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o, Nigerian internet tycoon Sim Shagaya, Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop, Nigerian author Chica Unigwe.