Ethiopian great singer Tilahun Gessesse died on Sunday night at the age of 68.

“One news story called him the ''Ethiopian Pavarotti,"…, said a report by The Washington Post quoting early reports which compared Tilahun with the late Italian singer Luciano Pavarotti, one of most commercially successful tenors of all time who used to singing with voice above baritone.

The Washington Post report said, “He was sometimes known as Tlahoun Gessesse, and a New York Times reveiwer in 1998 described his early 1970s records as "alive with the trebly, scratching, rhythm guitars, punching horn sections and James Brown-style drum rhythms that were flooding the world. Except that he was Ethiopian, his songs used Arabic and Eastern scales and his bands were state-run institutions.”

The reviewer, Ben Ratliff, continued: "His voice slips from a gargled upper-middle register to a yodel or a shriek, and flutters through a weave of scale notes, muezzin-style; sometimes he pauses between phrases, aware of his power, and lets out a chuckle," the report added.

According to the BBC, Tilahun had been the most dominant figure in Ethiopian music for more than half a century.

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