Ashenda: Between Freedom, Performance, and Power

By Makda D. Akelom

In 2023, after three years of war and silence, Ashenda returned to the streets of Tigray. I had been away just as long. Stepping back into it felt like celebrating for the first time. The air was thick with memory, but the city pulsed with color, music, and movement. Girls danced in clusters, old rhythms poured from speakers, and people who hadn’t been home in years returned — dressed up, tearful, wide-eyed.

I was one of them. After everything, being there felt surreal. Joyful, yes. But also harsh. I had just arrived in Mekelle and didn’t have time to get dressed or prepare. I didn’t have the traditional Ashenda paraphernalia. And for that, I was insulted.

For the first time, I could not take the insult. Not because it was an unprecedented or unexpected experience — I had always known women were harassed during these Ashenda celebrations — but because I was seeing it through a different eye. This time, I questioned why I should be insulted at all. I felt the pressure to perform a certain kind of femininity, and that rang louder than the music or the imposed expectation to take harassment quietly. The experience also led me to notice the invisible scripts women are expected to follow, the way space is used, and the way visibility is controlled. 

For many women in Tigray, Ashenda offers a brief, dazzling illusion and perhaps a glimpse of what actual freedom could look like. As a woman and an urban planning enthusiast, I’ve come to see the festival not only as a cultural ritual but also as a social mirror: One that reveals how space, femininity, and power continue to intersect and, at times, collide in public life.

The celebration is deeply rooted in Tigrayan culture, with roots stretching back to ancient Aksum. And later tied to the  Filseta, which honors the Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Over time, however, it has evolved into a vibrant public celebration of community and womanhood, drawing participants from various religious and cultural backgrounds. But the religious origin isn’t neutral. It carries with it values of virginity, youth, and modesty, and participation was traditionally limited to unmarried girls. Despite its original religious roots, it has, through the ages, been expanded and instrumentalised as, among others, a form of resistance and a platform for expressing sisterhood, solidarity, and joy.

Yet even within some of its empowering expressions, uncomfortable questions remain about this brief freedom. The fact that public space is never neutral and is produced by and for those in power (Lefebvre, 1991, p.26), and to imagine Ashenda as some radical crack in that structure, a sudden gender rupture, would be naive. So, to think it is claiming space and assuring belonging within the public space is untrue. Also, feminist geographers build on Lefebvre’s critique to show how urban spaces favor a narrow demographic, often centered on male norms, making women constantly adjust to a city not designed for them (Kern, 2020). And Ashenda isn’t any exception to this; mostly young women boldly take to the streets, asserting visual and sonic presence. But this presence operates within a narrow frame of acceptability. Is this celebration a radical claiming of urban space for women or a ritualized performance that conforms to patriarchal expectations, celebrating womanhood only when it appears beautiful, controlled, and safe for the status quo?

I’m not saying the joy of Ashenda, walking freely, laughing in public, being seen, should be dismissed. I’m saying that joy is conditional. It depends on performing a socially approved version of femininity. The dresses, the hairstyles, the behavior, all follow a traditional code. Society doesn’t celebrate this freedom because it’s liberating; it tolerates it because it fits a familiar narrative. To paraphrase bell hooks,  real freedom means existing safely and openly in public without conforming to socially sanctioned ideals of femininity (hooks, 2000, pp. 4–7). And Ashenda offers a kind of freedom that reassures cultural authority, not one that challenges it.

This becomes even clearer when we notice who is absent. Older women rarely take part, not because they don’t want to, but because patriarchy subtly privileges youth. Their absence is not accidental. It reflects how we’ve limited the meaning of femininity to something decorative, youthful, and temporary. Margaret Gullette (2004, p. 10) refers to this as being “aged by culture,” a process in which older women are erased not by time, but by collective bias. Ashenda could have been a powerful moment to unite generations of womanhood. Instead, it perpetuates the same logic that renders older women invisible, both in festivals and in urban life. 

And just as social rules were already narrowing who Ashenda was for, a more recent shift threatens to push it even further from its potential. The Tigray Culture and Tourism Bureau wants to brand the festival as “intangible cultural heritage,” aiming to attract tourists and elevate its national profit, with ongoing efforts to prepare and submit Ashenda for registration on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list to gain wider international recognition. With that comes institutional investment, tourism campaigns, and national branding, and, consequently, the grave risk of losing whatever grassroots agency girls and women once held. It will no longer be a grassroots-based community ritual, but increasingly a cultural artefact promoted by the state for the state’s own benefit.

To see how Ashenda is being pulled away from girls’ and women’s agency, one only needs to notice the recent theme of ashenda and how it has completely avoided the recent rampant femicide and gender based violence. This year’s theme for Ashenda is “Peace, Unity, and Hope for Tigray.” On paper, it sounds uplifting. But given the ongoing trauma and recent events, the theme feels dissonant. Instead of becoming a platform to amplify women’s voices or confront femicide, it is being used to showcase cultural pride without discomfort. The Tourism Bureau announced that a month-long series of panels, events, and training would be held to “celebrate and promote Tigray’s culture.” However, missing from that agenda is any genuine engagement with the realities that women in Tigray are actually experiencing.

Ashenda was never a utopia. It was never fully women’s, at least not in the feminist sense. But it held a kind of improvised agency, a fragile power carved out within the cracks of patriarchy. The fear now is that state co-option will push it even further away. This time, by political institutions and market forces, which impels one to ask: who defines its meaning? Who benefits? And who gets left behind?

The festival’s transformation mirrors what scholars call neoliberal cultural governance — the way states and global institutions turn local traditions into marketable assets (Harvey, 2005). In many postcolonial places, even in places like Ethiopia, which was never formally colonized, rituals that once held space for resistance get rebranded for tourism, sanitized for national pride, or used as tools for political messaging (Rogers, 2006). That’s what’s happening here. The language of “heritage” and “unity” has replaced critique and collective power. Ashenda is no longer spontaneous and rooted in its community. It’s being curated, made safe, profitable, and easy to control.

We no longer ask how Ashenda can empower women. Instead, we ask how it can represent the nation. That may seem like a subtle shift, but it makes a significant difference.

But this celebration didn’t become commodified in a vacuum. Its transformation has long been shaped by patriarchal community norms that dictated how women should behave, appear, and participate. What began as a celebration of girlhood and collective expression increasingly became a public showcase that rewards conformity and punishes divergence. 

Even within the space of celebration, Ashenda does not escape the logic of patriarchy and commodification. Women’s bodies continue to be sites of evaluation and control. A girl may be praised for dressing “properly,” “modesty,” “beauty”,  yet still be criticized if her dancing is seen as too bold or if she is expressive. Public joy is allowed, but only within narrow, respectable boundaries. and men become spectators too, commenting, judging, and at times harassing, as if their gaze grants legitimacy to the entire event. The festival becomes a performance, and the audience is not always kind. Why must a woman’s joy become public debate? Why must visibility always come with judgment? These are the contradictions women navigate, even within spaces intended to center and celebrate them.

Not just that, but it also has layers to it; girls who cannot afford the extravagant preparations, elaborate dresses, jewelry, and hairstyles, are often shamed through teasing songs. One popular verse, “ዓመት ዓቚርውዋ ቀምሽ ሓሪምውዋ” [“She was granted to live another year, but she couldn’t afford a dress”], mocks those who show up without new or flashy clothing. Others who visibly diverge from the norms, like girls wearing trousers, are targeted with lines like “ኣትቲ ምናምንየ: ኣሸንዳዶ ስረ ይኽድደንየ?” [“How can you be so useless as to wear trousers”]. These lyrics reveal a deeper truth: Ashenda not only allows narrow femininity but polices it.

One of the most heartbreaking moments comes at the end of Ashenda, when farewell songs echo through the streets. Farewell laments such as “ኣብቦይ ቀሽሺ ዳንዩና፤ አሸንዳ ከይዳ ዓድዳ ሰኣን ዋንና” — an appeal to the clergymen to intervene and make Ashenda last longer, a tacit acknowledgement that only men can do something about it –  aren’t just sweet traditions. They are bittersweet laments and pleas. These songs don’t celebrate closure; they mourn it. They call on community leaders to act, to make the fleeting freedom of Ashenda into something permanent.

The songs reveal what many hesitate to say aloud: the joy is conditional, the visibility is borrowed, and it must be returned. So what are we really celebrating? Is Ashenda a call for women-centered celebration, or a ritual that reassures patriarchy that women will quietly step back after three days of performing what is expected of them? If centuries of celebration haven’t produced safer, more inclusive streets for women beyond the festival, then maybe this freedom isn’t as real as we’ve made it out to be.

To call Ashenda sacred should not mean shielding it from critique, especially when that sacredness is built on women’s unpaid labor and unspoken boundaries. Why must women uphold tradition through modesty, performance, and dress, while men move through space, unmarked, unquestioned, every day of the year? Why must women constantly perform belongingness, while men simply belong?

Ashenda deserves to be honored, but not as a flawless tradition. It should be reclaimed as a political platform. Suppose we value what it could represent: women in the streets, raising their voices and claiming accessibility. In that case, it must become a space for feminist discourse, gender theory, and intergenerational sisterhood. Its religious and cultural roots can’t be erased, but they must be reimagined.

Ashenda should no longer center men or seek validation through performance or monetary praise. Instead, it needs a new narrative, one authored by women. Reclaiming it means rejecting its function as a spectacle that pleases cultural norms or male spectators. A tradition that once displayed girls for approval must become a space of political agency.

If we are to discuss freedom, it must be a freedom that teaches, resists, and transforms. Imagine girls not just singing, but questioning. Not just performing, but organizing. Not just dressing up, but shaping the future.

A radical Ashenda is one where joy isn’t borrowed, presence isn’t performance, and every woman, regardless of age, appearance, or status, belongs fully and without apology.

Our cities should reflect the same joy, solidarity, and belonging that Ashenda briefly makes visible. And that reflection should last, not just for three days, but all year. Without fear. Without pressure to perform. And without apology. 

Bibliography 

1. Lefebvre, H. 1991. The Production of Space. John Wiley and sons LTD.
2. Kern, L. 2020. Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World. Verso Books.
3. hooks, b. 2000. Feminism is for Everybody. Pluto Press.
4. Gullete, M. 2004. Aged by Culture. University of Chicago Press.  
5. Harvey, D. 2005. A Brief History of Neo-liberalism. Oxford University Press. 
6. Rogers, A. 2006. From Cultural Exchange to Transculturalism: A Review and Reconceptualization of Cultural Appropriation. Communication Theory. 

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Makda is an architect and former lecturer at Mekelle University.