Ravaged by years of civil war, an oppressive military regime and on-going conflict with neighbouring Eritrea, Ethiopia’s economy remains poverty-stricken, despite recent increases in GDP. In musical terms, however, it is rich beyond measure … as Australia discovered at WOMADelaide 2010. Thanks to an inspired piece of programming, one of Ethiopia’s national treasures, the charismatic veteran singer Mahmoud Ahmed, performed at WOMAD’s southern hemisphere flagship festival in Adelaide, along with the cream of the country’s up-and-coming talent in the band Dub Colossus.

In many ways, the landlocked state once known as Abyssinia is the sleeping giant of African music — the continent’s eastern counterpart to the West African powerhouses of Mali and Senegal. Ethiopia’s music reflects its amazingly diverse mix of ethnicities and languages, its long history and its status as one of only two African countries not to have been colonised by European powers. Even though it employs a unique modal system (pentatonic with characteristically long intervals between some notes), Ethiopian music is totally accessible to western audiences.

Through the filter of their own traditions, Ethiopian musicians of the ‘60s and ‘70s developed an idiosyncratic brand of pop — a mixture of military brass band music, jazz, funk and soul. The music’s comparative lack of exposure has led to the suggestion that it’s the missing link in the pan-African melting pot.

Few non-natives know more about Ethiopian music or indeed appreciate the country’s musicians more than Frenchman Francis Falceto, who’s bringing a band to Adelaide led by the legendary singer Mahmoud Ahmed . The Paris-based journalist and music producer is responsible for the critically acclaimed Ethiopiques compilation series that has done more than anything else to put the music of Africa’s second most populous state on the world map, at least in Europe. Ethiopiques, which features primarily singers and musicians from the golden era of Ethiopian music, was launched on the Buda Musique label in 1998. In December 2009, Falceto issued Volumes 24 & 25 of the series and he’s preparing another dozen more for release over the next year or two.

When I talked to Falceto in mid-December, he had only recently returned from a trip to Ethiopia. He returned in January, and was back there again after WOMADelaide to supervise a festival he helps stage in the capital, Addis Ababa.

The voluble Frenchman remembers with some clarity when his affair with Ethiopian music began — and, yes, it was love at first sight. “It was April, 1984. I was at a party with a promoter friend of mine. Another friend put on an LP of Mahmoud Ahmed , which later became Ethiopiques Volume 7. We were amazed. We had no idea about this music, and we were supposed to know a bit about music in general. We sent copies of this LP to some journalist friends and music reviewers and by the following day all had replied, asking: ‘What’s that, where did you get it from?’, so we understood it was good music, everybody agreed about this, though it was unknown music.”