Munit Mesfin is an award-winning Ethiopian-American singer, songwriter, and a teaching artist living and working in the DMV area. She weaves her Ethiopian roots into the music that she loves performing, jazz, soul, and funk. She has two albums with her guitar and voice duet, Munit and Jörg, and more recently, another with the DMV based extraordinary world music band, Project Locrea. In 2022, Project Locrea won two Wammies (Washington Area Music Awards) for Best World music Artist/Group and Best World Music Song. In 2021, Munit also won the overall award for the Songwriters’ Association of Washington’s Mid-Atlantic Songwriting Competition with her song “Adwa” about the great Ethiopian victory against colonialism, and was a finalist for the competition’s newest “Freedom Songs” category for her song on racial justice and police brutality.
With her music, Munit has performed around the world in Ethiopia, Egypt, South Africa, Germany, Spain. Around the DC, MD, and VA area, she has shared her music in places such as the Smithsonian National Museum for African Art, the Kennedy Center, Mr. Henry’s, Blues Alley, Walters Museum, Sankofa Cafe, Academy of Art, Workhouse Arts Center, and in the Fairfax County and Arlington Summer Concert Series amongst others. She has been featured in several news outlets around the world, including the Voice of America, SABC in South Africa, Deutschewelle Radio, Spanish media, Ethiopian Television and more. She loves creating community through music with kids as young as 3 and as old as 103!
Munit also has, with her three children, a family band called Munit and Z Lovebugs that was founded in the confines of the pandemic and is now traveling and performing in schools and festivals in the area! Besides performing for children and adults, Munit is also a Program Director and Teaching Artist for Carpe Diem Arts’ Ukes on the Move program, teaching ukulele and songwriting to children in different public schools. She is also a Teaching Artist with the Civic Circle, teaching about civic engagement through music, beat production, and songwriting, and Wolf Trap’s Institute for Early Learning through the Arts.
In her previous life in Ethiopia, Munit was a judge in a singing competition TV show (she was the kind one), a creative director for a radio drama empowering girls, and a radio DJ promoting positive stories from the African continent.
She is currently working on her first solo project, and her children’s music album.