ABSTRACT
African music presents a notational paradox. Africans transmitted most of their musics orally, without indigenous forms of written representation, but their musical traditions stand among those most frequently sampled for transcription in foreign notational systems. The writing of Ethiopian liturgical texts in parchment manuscripts dates back to the earliest periods of literary activity, but the Ethiopian Christian musical tradition was for many centuries transmitted orally. The Ethiopian melekket divide into three categories, reflecting their correlation with one of the three classes of melody in the Ethiopian Christian musical system. To achieve a fuller understanding of what may be other indigenous representations of African music, scholars may need to move away from Western concepts of notation as music-writing. A recurrent issue in notating African music is the question of what percentage of a musical event or recording ought to be transcribed.
