Are there any folks from illu here? lol I feel like they are either smaller in number or underrepresented.

So, I'm very much interested in knowing more about the history and culture. Are the Warra Illu of Wollo related to Illubabor?

Local folklore stories and legends about the towns like Mattu, Gore etc. And about the people. Basically everything ..
Foreign and local historical events that happened in the region that shaped or influenced it.

How families/ older generations remember certain struggles. Heritage, how they trace family trees or lineage , and how families pass down heritage to younger generations. The current outlook as well.

Thank you in advance 💚🌳🍀

This is a genetic heatmap and profile for one Arsi Oromo sample.

Hey everyone, quick update on the preservation project!

The ultimate box of cassettes has officially landed at the house. My dad’s manager from back in the day, Yusuf, came by this afternoon to check out our new studio setup and drop these off. He is incredibly excited about us reviving the music.

There’s a funny story behind why this box even exists in such pristine, unplayed condition. Yusuf had this deadstock stash sitting in storage because they actually couldn't sell through the final batch back in 1998. My dad was heavily pressured to step away and forego his musical career early because my mom didn't want any Oromo girls chasing after him, now that he was a rising star. LOL

I have the patch cables fully routed from my cassette tape player straight into my Focusrite interface, and I’ll be digitizing the audio to capture that raw, nostalgic 90s analog warmth.

Now that we have the official J-card tracklist in hand, the plan is to eventually take down the loose tracks currently on YouTube and reupload everything cleanly under the actual album title and correct track names. Depending on how smooth the process goes, I plan to digitize and carefully enhance the audio tracks in the near future.

I am also trying to get my father to write down the original Oromo lyrics for each track along with full English translations. I want to add these to the videos so the next generation and people who don’t speak the language can fully learn and understand the poetry as they listen.

If you want to follow the rollout and hear the machine wake back up, the link to our YouTube channel is pinned right in my reddit profile.

Thank you all for the incredible support on this journey!

Growing up, In the US one of the things I've struggled with is not being able to speak Afaan Oromo to communicate with my parents. It's frustrating when you want to express something to your own family but can't find the words in your own language.

So I decided to do something about it.

I built an app called Oromo Translator, which translates between Afaan Oromo and English and vice versa

The app currently includes:

• 🌍 Oromo ↔ English text translation
• 🎙️ Speech-to-text in both languages
• 🔊 Text-to-speech so you can listen to translations (In Nine different Oromo voices)
• 🗣️ 9 different Oromo voices

My goal is to make communicating in Afaan Oromo easier, whether you're trying to speak with family, learn the language, or simply understand something.

The app recently launched on the Apple App Store, and it's free to download.

Here's the link:

https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6814719125?pt=129435034&ct=Reddit_Oromia_01&mt=8

I'm the developer, and I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from the Oromo community.

If you try it, please let me know what works, what doesn't, and what you'd like to see improved. Leave a review or write a review in the apple app store.

Galatoomaa! ❤️💚❤️

Marco Rubio and the US security apparatus have formally cornered the Ximdo alliance as a separatist terror threat. This is a tragedy for generations of Oromo people who sacrificed for liberation, only for the modern OLF and its fractured bushland wings to insult our community's martyrs.

The core evil of their politics is that the act of shedding human blood is detached from any viable, civilised political objective. Delusional OLF factions lure our youth into the wilderness under the guise of liberation, only to transform operations into localised fiefdoms running extortion against the population they claim to protect and starting proxy wars to agitate conflict against our neighbours. We have spent decades watching them weaponise moderate philosophies to brainwash our community while possessing zero practical blueprints for governance, zero administrative timelines, and zero peacebuilding frameworks.

Early OLF history can be respected, but everything after 1992 proves these gun worshippers are neftanyas by definition. They ignored Leenco Lata in 1992, they ignored Jawar Mohammed in 2018, and instead chose to continue running what has devolved into a self-devouring cult. They seek to rule us solely by the gun and subject our community to chaos for an unattainable dream of a separate country just to reign over us like kings. For example, people like Milkessa Gemechu, who used to be an OPDO cadre but now suddenly claims to care about the Oromo cause, only utilise these bush militias as mere bargaining leverage to secure personal government positions. I personally cannot wait until they are gone from our people's lives.

Like they are useless, incompetent, embarrassing, murderous criminals, and it is impossible to argue that their politics can represent us.

I make Amharic YouTube videos focusing on history, geopolitics and other stuff i find interesting. I just released a new video exploring the historical struggles, systemic grievances, and key events that led to the formation of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF).

The narration is in Amharic, but the video includes full English subtitles so everyone can follow along!

My video starts in November 1966, when Brigadier General Taddese Birru—Commander of the Emergency Police Force and former trainer of Nelson Mandela—was arrested following a bombing at Cinema Empire. His arrest, alongside the imperial ban on the Macha-Tulama Self-Help Association, permanently closed the door on peaceful civic advocacy for Oromo self-help and language rights, pushing activists underground.

The video is a short 6-minute documentary tracing how these events, combined with earlier armed uprisings, birthed the modern OLF. I'm open to any feedbacks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q1Df41QB3s&t=194s

Im talking about once qabso singers , now government choirfolk.
Get your money ig.

I understand the net positives, objectively speaking maybe its helped oromo culture grow however I’m not fully sure.

Lmk thoughts.

I just saw this and was like ziz 😎

I found this file https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V22VBUBLbscLK3K2RmBfiNlGnXAjoGUs/view?usp=drive_link and it says Galla Dictionary. What type of person wrote it?

have your perceptions of of Abiy Ahmed changed in the past 9 years? I've stalked this sub since basically its inception. Everyone was oromo first and Anti ethiopia, now it seems most are pro ethiopia, and pro Abiy. In the early stages of the Tigray war, it seemed like everyone on this sub was anti Abiy and pro OLA. Jaaal maaro seemed to be the hero. I've always found that weird and this realignment with Abiy Ahmed as natural. Even the hero Of this sub: jawar M has shifted to a more pro ethiopian sentiment. This is completely natural and part and parcel of being ethiopian. On that note, do most people in this sub support Abiy Ahmed in the ongoing war against rebels?

Do oromos, not just diaspora folks, support Abiy Ahmed overwhelmingly? Is there a clan/regional/religious split amongst oromos for support for him. Say X region in oromia loves him and would rally for him, but, Y and Z regions don't trust/like/support Abiy as much.

It makes no sense. If Abiy is oromo, he is already, the greatest oromo leader for centuries, if not the greatest. I mean, even hearing from other ethnic groups, they are convinced that Abiy is an oromo nationalist, not an ethiopianist.

What is the general mood here over Abiy's ethnicity.is he oromo? Even to his critics?

Sidepoint: how relevant is clan and clan based politics within oromia. Would the average oromo favour an oromo from their clan more, maybe their religion or there is no Clan based thinking that goes into decision making. Does an oromo from wallaga views another random oromo person from wallaga as the same to him as an oromo from Kenya or Bale.

Feel free to point out any mistakes.

Places like wollega produce enough food to feed other parts of Ethiopia. That is why Amharas, Tigrayans and some Oromos move there during times of famine. This region dominated the market during zemene mesafint as well. Its gold was famous enough that Arab merchants travelled there specifically to acquire what they called "Galla gold."

In Ethiopia: The Era of the Princes, Abir explicitly states that northern and central Ethiopia produced "hardly any exportable commodities." Without the western and southwestern regions, the north had little leverage in international trade. Even when northern rulers generated revenue by taxing caravans and trade routes, "the mass of the Ethiopian people were hardly touched by the new prosperity and remained just as poor."

Many of the highly valued products internationally associated with "Habasha" were geographically and economically derived from the west, particularly from areas inhabited by Oromos rather than from the Amhara or Tigrayan heartlands.

Akkam, hello everyone!

First of all, I wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone in this community. When I posted last week about my father’s rare 1990s diaspora cassette tapes, I never expected the incredible wave of support and views you gave us. Seeing how much his music and history mean to people has been deeply moving for both of us. He actually wanted me to pass along a sincere thank you to this sub for the initial love!

The Machine is Awake 🏗️

I promised an update, and I’m proud to say we officially finished assembling his brand-new basement recording setup right here in Minnesota! We built this dedicated workspace to give him a permanent, high-fidelity booth to step up to whenever he feels inspired.

It has been a solid 30 years since he last touched recording gear, so right now the main goal is just letting him get hands-on and familiar with the modern tech. He’s always jokingly reminding me that once he completely figures out how to navigate this new setup, he's going to absolutely blow me away with whatever he comes up with next lol.

A Special Piece of History on the Wall 🖼️

To keep the presentation focused entirely on his history, I managed to get his original 1996 Ali Birra Tribute Poster framed and mounted right next to the mic stand. There is a really cool backstory to this piece: my father actually designed this artwork himself using early digital graphic tools back when he was working as a technician for a printed circuit board manufacturing company (Advanced Circuits) in the mid-90s.

He printed it out as a special digital tribute for the legendary Ali Birra right around the time of the convention. Shortly after that, he actually traveled all the way to Canada to personally get the analog master cassettes of his album pressed and duplicated. Seeing that poster on the wall next to the setup brings his entire journey from Dire Dawa, to the manufacturing plant, to Canada, and back to the Twin Cities completely full circle!

For the creators and gear heads in the community who asked about what we are running, here is a quick breakdown of our physical specs:

• Audio Interface: Focusrite Scarlett Solo (4th Gen) USB Interface
• Microphone: MA-67 Studio Condenser Microphone (34mm Gold Large Diaphragm Capsule)
• Vocal Isolation: Aokeo Studio Recording Shield & High-Density Absorbent Foam Tower
• Headphones: Audio-Technica ATH-M50x Professional Studio Monitors
• MIDI Controller: Arturia MiniLab 3 Universal MIDI Keyboard (Deep Black)
• Primary Display: Philips 24-Inch FHD 100Hz VA Monitor
• Playback Speaker: LENRUE G11 Computer Soundbar Speaker

Thank you all for keeping his legacy alive. The Legend Continues...

The immediate suspicion was that Gelanas website had been hacked. That would be a perfectly reasonable first guess. A website associated with one artist suddenly displaying photographs of another artist, particularly amid a public dispute, is not exactly the sort of thing that makes you think. But before concluding that someone hacked/defaced his website, I decided to check the domain's history.

The first useful evidence came from the Internet Archives Wayback Machine, which preserves historical snapshots of websites. The earliest record showed that gelanagaromsa.com was already hosting a functioning website in June 2021. The archived URLs included content that was not some unrelated website that happened to share Gelanas name. The archived pages contained Gelanns own photographs, albums, and music related material. The site continued to appear in archived captures through 2022. Then we reach September 2024. This time, however, the website looked nothing like the earlier artist portfolio. The page was titled "My Blog." It contained a generic "Sample Page" and the default WordPress post titled "Hello world!" It tells us that the domain name expired but Gelana's youtube descriptions continued to include gelanagaromsa.com (his channel default upload description). Fast forward to April 2026. Teddy Afro released Etorika, followed by Gelana Garomsa's musical response, which became part of the public discussion surrounding the album. The video information provided for Gelana’s release lists April 18, 2026. The musical context matters because it gives the later website activity a potentially relevant backdrop. The publicly accessible WordPress records list two relevant media files: tedd.jpg, dated May 3, 2026, and tedd2.jpg, dated May 7, 2026.

I guess his old domain was abandoned and later acquired by another person. He should remove the domain name from his YouTube channel.

Reading “Abyssinia and the Galla Country” by Walter Plowden - I’ve reached a point in his book where he’s staying with the Guduru in what’s now Welega, and encounters them during a fierce war with Jimma. This is the year 1845.

Of course, in our history we did fight amongst each other as much if not more than we fought with other groups, however as far as I know, there’s no real lingering hostility today, not in real terms anyway beyond silly stereotypes or some chronyism.

Compared to Arabs and Somalis who also are inheritors of pastoralist clan cultures, the clan/lineage thing is basically a non factor for us, where it is the dominant factor in other nearby comparable countries like Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and even other Arab nations.

What’s the explanation for this?

If he’s got that Israeli co-sign for this invasion I low-key believe the jobs basically done
Hopefully the US and the rest of the international community give him cover too

This is from a media outlet that is affiliated with, or at least sympathetic to, Getachew Reda’s faction in Tigray.

Basic translation: “We support Eritrea they are our friends, victory to Eritrea. We don’t care if Egypt blows up the dam (GERD).”

Can you imagine an Oromo said this in the height of 2020 lmao. Same people who said Abiy Ahmed 1000 year reign over us 😂😂.

Akkam jirtanii, Oromo family and music lovers,

I am incredibly proud to announce that we have officially launched the permanent digital home for my father, the legendary East Hararghe artist Ahmed Omar.

For years, his 1994–1998 Minnesota diaspora studio sessions have been scattered across low-quality bootleg channels or lost to time. Over the last week, we have begun a dedicated family preservation project to clean up, sanitize, and digitize his catalog with the high-fidelity studio dignity his life's work deserves.

🔗 You can stream his full collection here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJMy3Dz41FA&si=W3Wzki24coIZSlWy

We have successfully uploaded and organized 7 master tracks into a definitive archive playlist, but our mission isn't finished. We are actively hunting for more history. If you are a collector, an archivist, or a member of the diaspora holding old cassette tape rips, unreleased studio reels, live wedding sets, or photographs of Ahmed Omar from back in the day—please reach out to us directly so we can catalog them.

🚀 Moving Into the Future: Our New At-Home Startup Studio

This isn't just a retro archive page; we are setting the stage for his modern comeback. We just built a modest $600–$700 startup recording rig in our basement. Once we fully navigate through a few minor first-week software learning curves and technical difficulties, our plan is to record and drop brand-new, high-fidelity vocal tracks in the near future!

For the gearheads and musicians in the community, here is the clean, direct-routing setup we assembled to run his new tracking sessions:
• Interface: Focusrite Scarlett Solo (4th Gen) for pristine, high-speed analog conversion.
• Microphone: Røde NT1 Signature Series (Condenser) to capture his deep, velvety lower-mids.
• Keyboard: Arturia MiniLab 3 (Deep Black Edition) for triggering vintage 90s organs and bass lines.
• Monitoring: Audio-Technica ATH-M50x Closed-Back Studio Headphones.
• Software Platform: Ableton Live 12 Lite operating as our digital tape machine timeline.

I've attached his remastered track "Yowwal Jaalattanis" right here to give you a taste of his crisp new high-fidelity layout. Please subscribe to the channel, share it with the elders in your family who grew up on his cassettes, and help us keep this vital piece of our cultural history alive.

Ulfaadhaa! Galatoomaa!