Ethiopic Music

Ethiopic music denotes the music of Ethiopia in its full range, from the ancient liturgical chant of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the pentatonic kiñit scales of traditional instruments such as the masenqo fiddle, krar lyre and kebero drum, to the brass-led popular music of twentieth-century Addis Ababa. Its modern golden age, from the 1950s to the 1974 revolution, produced a distinctive urban sound of big-band horns, vibraphone and Amharic singing, documented on the #Amha# and #Kaifa# labels and revived internationally by the #Buda Musique# series "Éthiopiques", through figures such as *Mulatu Astatke* and *Mahmoud Ahmed*.