Hacaaluu Hundeessaa Full album 2021🙏🙏🙏🙏

Hachalu Hundessa’s posthumous album, “Maal Mallisaa”, is a versatile album that is full of euphonious tracks for music lovers. From a numbers and promotions standpoint, the album had truly impressive weeks on the charts, topping many Hollywood artists’ works that were released around the same time. “Eessa Jirta” and “Goota Koo” tracks from the album have become part of the musical canon for his fans and Oromo people in general. However, the third track in the album, “Kuullee Koo”, is a ubiquitous song that seems to stay relevant endlessly. Besides the musical arrangement, structure, and stunning instrumentals used, the song is novel in its story-telling format, purpose, and meaning of the lyrics. The track composition is electrifying in nature, and the lyrics condenses stories from hundreds of years ago with a superjacent message of love, making it fascinating not only for music lovers, but also for historophiles like myself.

In the song, Hachalu makes references to 19th century stories of the Oromo people in the Wollo region specifically. The Wollo region, located to the eastern part of the Amhara regional state, today is one of the culturally diverse places in Ethiopia, with its capital city at Desse(Dessie). Yet, it is one of the places that is historically claimed by different ethnic groups such as the Amharas and the Oromos. The references Hachalu makes in the song, in return, trigger the history of the Wollo Oromos and the political culture of Ethiopia from hundreds of years ago. The song is generally interesting, but it would be an even more commendable one within the understanding of the Wollo region and its history, especially during the early phases of the formation of the current Ethiopian state. As such, I seek to explore the meaning behind the lyrics of “Kuullee Koo” and the history of the Wollo region prior to the formation of the present-day Ethiopia.

A Sense of Belonging
Music has long been used as one of the greatest mechanisms to express powerful stories about a society that struggles to preserve its identity, history, and culture in an increasingly hostile political environment. Most poets and musicians use lyrics, instruments, and melodies to get their message and grievances across. One of the early records dates back before the common era during the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem, known as the Babylonian Captivity in 586 BCE.

Prior to Babylonian Captivity, the Kingdom of Israel was living peacefully until the Assyrians conquered the northern part of the kingdom in 722 BCE, causing dispersion among the various tribes of Israel. However, the home of the tribe Judah, the southern part of the kingdom, had retained its sovereignty until 586 BCE. The first few verses of Psalm 137 in the bible are full of sorrowful moments, as it recalls the devastated lives of the Israelites in captivity. In verse 1, the psalmist states, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” This historical account demonstrates how the people of Israel longed for their native homeland, and their desperate cry shows that the land was an integrated part of their identity as a nation.

The eastern Wollo region’s historical significance to the Oromo society and identity is as integral and deep rooted as Jerusalem was to the Israelites. In his song “Kullee Koo”, Hachalu also seems to imply that the eastern Wollo region is part of the Oromo society that is deeply rooted within their identity; as such, it is onerous to relinquish. As the Israelites remembered the lost part of their identity at the time, Hachalu also remembers Wollo as an integral part of the Oromo people and attempts to bring attention to this region especially since the region is completely dissociated from the large Oromo society culturally and in political boundry.
The Oromo
The Oromos have occupied and lived around the same area at first, however, they started to disperse to different areas. This happened over years; thus, it is important to understand prior events that led to this. The social and political landscape of the horn of Africa has taken different shapes throughout the history. Many historians have written that the Oromo people used to live together in the same area, sharing a common socio-political system of governance called the Gadaa system (Hassen & Hayward, 1990). Although the history of the Oromo origin is inconclusive to some people in Ethiopia, the presence of Oromo in central and even the southern tip of the highlands of Ethiopia is apparent as early as the Zagwe dynasty (Hassen, 2015).