Celebrate Israel’s birthday (Yom Ha’Atzmaut) with an in-person and livestreamed global music concert from musician Gili Yalo, whose intriguing combination of dance Afrobeats, R&B, soul, and futuristic brass comes from a personal and poignant place.

Gili Yalo’s music embodies his incredible personal story as an Ethiopian Israeli and a refugee. His love of singing came about through hardship. During Operation Moses, the covert evacuation of Ethiopian Jews during a famine in 1984, his family fled to refugee camps in Sudan. As they made the perilous trip through the desert on foot toward the “Promised Land,” Yalo’s singing was their constant companion. Music encouraged them to keep moving during their exhausting and emotional journey.

Gili Yalo’s band sends audiences on an entrancing rhythmic journey through grooves, beats, and flows. His music gives new meaning to traditional Ethiopian music and is an expression of advanced musical arrangements and personal triumph.

His new EP, “Made in Amharica,” is a result of his cooperation with Grammy Award-nominee Niles City Sound of Dallas, combining modern sounds with Ethiopian roots, dance beats, blues, jazz, and piping-hot soulful funk.