Fetle Wondimu Nega (AKA Nu) is an Ethiopian-Australian sound artist and musician from Naarm. Her work explores ideas and stories emanating from her cross-cultural experiences of language, spirituality and identity. 

As a vocalist and self-taught music producer, Fetle draws inspiration from her Bachelor of Science (Mathematics and Statistics) from the University of Melbourne, delving into the mathematical nature of sound synthesis and algorithmic rhythms. She has recently expanded her creative practice to include the young code-based music creation tool Sonic Pi, as a medium to interrogate cultural exchange, language and technology.

 CODE-SWITCH is a conversation between my voice and an emergent code-based music creation tool, Sonic Pi. It explores the sometimes dissonant, sometimes harmonious interaction of languages within my bilingual mind, where meaning is constructed at the intersection of two identities. When I entered kindergarten, speaking English became a necessity to interact with the Western world, suddenly encroaching on my understanding of self and the image I’d built of the world around me in my native tongue of Amharic. Now, English is my dominant language, and often the scaffold with which I build meaning and communicate my ideas. There are times, however, when it swallows up my Amharic and spits it back at me in disjointed sequences. CODE-SWITCH describes my bilingual experience as an arc of loss into acceptance. It begins with a harmonic vocal-laden soundscape, an uncomfortable introduction symbolising language dissonance, followed by a hard-hitting Western drum pattern, and a final incorporation of African drums signaling the slow transition into acceptance. This piece was created using a variety of self-recorded samples edited in Ableton Live, such as my Ethiopian-jazz (ambassel scale) inspired vocals. I also used granulated chords, which were then imported, arranged and produced with a series of coded functions and in-built Sonic Pi samples. Representing the ability of English to literally and figuratively disassemble, distort and reassemble my Amharic.

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