I annoyed the shit out of them [my parents] by spending my whole childhood beating on things. I drove them to distraction and I never thought they'd give me a drumkit in a million years. By the time I was 15 my mom had just about given up on me. But she must have figured that at least I had an interest in something other than drugs or being a criminal, so she bought me a snare drum. After a couple of days whacking that, I bought the rest of the kit for $50 from a guy I knew. Two weeks later I was in my first band.

When I got into music I went all the way into music; I didn't have no time after that for nothing else.

First and foremost I am a drummer. After that, I'm other things.... But I didn't play drums to make money. I played drums because I loved them.... My soul is that of a drummer.... It came to where I had to make a decision — I was going to be a drummer. Everything else goes now. I play drums. It was a conscious moment in my life when I said the rest of things were getting in the way. I didn't do it to be come rich and famous, I did it because it was the love of my life.

Since I had a lot of love for music and a box guitar by my side -- a hand-made guitar used to belong to a martyr known as "Oromo," I continued to develop and focus on my musical skills with "sne-Tbeb" until 1987.Since at that time I was very young, I had very easy time to master the "Krar" and also the box guitar. And also since I kind of felt a very strong love for music in general, learning the instruments was very simple for me.

I started playing music when I was really young. I didn't start off on guitar because I couldn't fit my hands around the neck and fret board. So I did the drums. And back then, all I did was hit things.

For the longest time, I didn't know the name of anyone in Led Zeppelin. I didn't care about what they looked like or ate. I wanted to listen, not read about them. I've always had that philosophy. I never started playing drums to get chicks or money or anything else. Long before I had concepts of those things, I wanted to be a drummer. That's the basic concept of what I do. I'm a drummer. I play drums. We are artists as drummers, and people should realize that. Not everyone can sit down and use all four of your limbs simultaneously to create something out of wood and plastic. We're creating something beautiful, and it may not sound pretty, but if you listen with the right ear, it sounds very pretty. If you try and listen to a song without drums, you haven't got anything.

It was just very easy, it wasn't something I had to try for. So I understood music to be my thing and no matter what it was going to take, I had to end up in it.

Music was my original interest. But when I was studying in the United States, I had to select another subject in addition to my main line. That was what landed me in drama. But I found that in dram I was also in music because I could produce plays with a musical background and I could use music for the mood. So it was through music that I got into writing.

Music is all about wanting to be better at it.

It was alright and it did form a good starting point for my musical career as people took notice of my desire to pursue music professionally.

I like to say something in as little time as possible…I don't think I have the fundamental confidence necessary to write a four-minute meandering song. Number one – because I'm impatient. But number two – because I've never been someone who is listened to. No one would stop to listen to me. I'm not a white guy noodling on a guitar for 45 minutes. No one would stay for me. I learned from a young age to be concise because there's a very small window for me to grab someone's attention.

The first thing I did when I picked up any instrument, when I was five years old, was write a song. It's kind of funny; I thought about it, statements that it's a "solo effort" — it's kind of like, "Oh, well I've been doing this since I was five." I was kind of doing this before I did anything else.

I started to play music at a very young age during the time I joined the liberation movement. The very first instrument I ever touched was a "Krar" (a hand-made traditional guitar), I guess it was in 1980. After that, in 1981 I had the opportunity to learn and play the "SHambqo" (traditional flute). And then in 1983, I was also exposed to learning some Fine Arts, and did some hand drawings and paintings.

I was always into different kinds of music but just by default, I was singing and playing acoustic guitar; I didn’t know how to dance or anything. So it would take some time, over a year, for me to kind of progress into the stuff that I ended up doing later, the more Southern soul, country-rock, whatever-you-want-to-call-it kind of thing.