Saint Yared — the man who wrote the chant.
Tradition gives him the whole of Ethiopian sacred music: three modes, a notation of small marks above the words, and the aquaquam, the slow chanted dance with prayer staff, sistrum and drum. The story says he learned it from three birds sent from Eden. His books are still the ones cantors learn from.
Yared is dated to the sixth century, in the reign of Gebre Meskel of Aksum. Whether one man composed the corpus or the tradition attached itself to his name, the notation system he is credited with — melekket, small Ge'ez characters written above the text as memory cues — is genuinely distinctive and is still taught in church schools. Training as a debtera takes years and covers chant, the notation, poetry known as qene, and the dance. Yared's feast falls on 11 Genbot in the Ethiopian calendar.
The same ground, other faiths
claims that share this one's ideasSign in to open the first thread. Everything here is attributed.