Tigrinya Music

Tigrinya music is the popular and traditional music sung in the Tigrinya language of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, built around the krar lyre, the kebero drum and, in its modern form, keyboards, guitar and drum machines. Its singers move between traditional guayla dance songs, patriotic anthems forged during Eritrea's independence struggle and romantic ballads, with call-and-response choruses and the pentatonic kiñit scales shared across the Ethiopian highlands. Figures such as *Tsehaytu Beraki*, who accompanied herself on krar, and *Abraham Afewerki*, who fused the idiom with jazz, reggae and R&B, define its poles of tradition and modernisation.