Mulatu Astatke

Mulatu Astatke is one of Ethiopia's most celebrated musicians and arrangers, best known for changing the face of Ethiopian music during the "Swinging Addis" era of the late '60s and 1970s. He is the father of the music he has named "Ethio Jazz."

His story in music began in the late 1950s when his family sent a 16 year-old Mulatu to learn aeronautical engineering at Lindisfarne College near Wrexham in North Wales during the late 1950s. "I respected the Headmaster there very much; he was a very intelligent man and taught us various subjects. I had starting playing trumpet and, at one student review, he said that I should focus on music as a career because I had a talent, so that became my main focus."

Mulatu studied piano, clarinet and harmony and graduated with a degree in music from Trinity College Of Music in London before studying at the Eric Gilder School Of Music in Twickenham whose students included Osibisa frontman Teddy Osei and singer-songwriter Labi Siffre. Mulatu immersed himself in the London jazz scene, playing vibes and piano at the Metro Club in Soho, Edmundo Ros' club on Regent Street and Ronnie Scott's alongside ex-pat African and Caribbean musicians. Close friends included saxophonist Joe Harriott and vocalist / percussionist Frank Holder who lived in the same apartment block in St John's Wood (they would later record the Mulatu In London 45 together in 1969).

In 1963, Mulatu moved to the United States to become the first African student to enroll at the jazz-leaning Berklee College Of Music in Boston, studying vibraphone and percussion (previous students had included vibraphonist Gary Burton and pianist Keith Jarrett). Here, he began hearing and gravitating towards Latin jazz and began incorporating it into his own music, recording his first two albums, Afro-Latin Soul, Volumes 1 & 2, in New York City in 1966 for the independent Worthy label. The albums were early experiments as Mulatu began to hone his Ethio jazz sound, led by vibraphone and backed by a mixed New York band including Latin musicians. Tracks included the wedding song 'Kulunmanqueleshi' and an adaptation of the traditional war chant 'I Faram Gami I Faram.' " We had learned about how Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie created their own brand of jazz," remembers Mulatu. "I thought to myself — why can't I create my own music? I am Ethiopian, I have a unique background compared to everyone else at Berklee. I can do something different."

By the time Mulatu returned home to Addis Ababa in 1969, he was intent on creating his own more ambitious musical fusion. In Addis, he arrived to a booming, progressive night-life scene that offered plenty of scope for new directions. He named his new music "Ethio jazz," and his recordings from the period feature him using local musicians, steeped in the four basic pentatonic modes with which they grew up, to infuse a new flavour into the structures he had brought with him from America.

As well as leading his own bands, Astatke worked as an arranger for many of Ethiopia's leading artists of the era including Mahmoud Ahmed, Getatchew Mekurya and Tilahun Gessesse but his music met stern resistance from musical and cultural purists. He brought in vibraphone, electric keyboards, effects pedals and the use of congas and bongos to articulate Latin rhythms. And, perhaps most controversially, he began using traditional Ethiopian instruments in new ways, with the krar (lyre), masenqo (one string fiddle) and washint (penny flute) repurposed to play Mulatu's new blend of jazz.

The sound we recognise now as Ethio-jazz took shape in earnest during the early '70s as Mulatu's influence and reputation grew. He recorded the classic Mulatu Of Ethiopia back in New York for Worthy in 1972 and had partnered with Amha Eshete back in Addis, an ambitious young music fan who had started Ethiopia's first independent label, Amha Records. In 1973, Mulatu was asked to host Duke Ellington and his band during a tour of Ethiopia and Zambia in 1973 and performed with him in the presence of Haile Selassie at the Addis Hilton. Duke paid tribute to Mulatu with a performance of his composition 'Dewel' during the concert and wrote his own tribute to Ethio jazz, 'Addi' on the The English Concert LP later that year, not long before he passed away. During this time, Astatke also met and befriended Alice Coltrane during a trip to Ethiopia and they recorded a radio show together.

The following year, Selassie was deposed in a coup that ushered in 18 years of repressive rule by the Derg, a Soviet-backed military junta. A strict curfew put an end to Addis's vibrant nightlife and many musicians left the country. Astatke, however, stayed in Addis, teaching music and continuing his musical journey. Some of his most celebrated recordings appeared on his album Yekatit Ethio Jazz (1974) combining traditional Ethiopian music with American jazz, funk, and soul and six tracks on the compilation album Ethiopian Modern Instrumentals Hits. "I was left alone because I never got involved in politics," states Mulatu. "My music was instrumental so it was never seen as controversial." Indeed, 'Yekatit' is the Ge'ez word meaning 'February,' the month during which the revolution took place. By 1975, Amha Records had ceased production after the Derg forced Amha Eshete to flee the country. Mulatu remained to play vibes for Hailu Mergia and the Walias Band's 1977 album Tche Belew (which included the classic 'Musicawi Silt') before the Walias also left Ethiopia to tour internationally. During this period, Astatke took advantage of the warm relationship between the Derg and the Castro government in Cuba, visiting Havana and deepening his knowledge of Latin music, first hand.

In 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Derg disintegrated and the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front took power, establishing a parliamentary republic. Amha Eshete returned to Addis, having already been contacted by Francis Falceto, a French record producer with plans to licence the recordings made between 1968 and 1974 by Astatke and others. The initial disc in the Ethiopiques series, released on the Buda Musique label in 1998, was intended to be the first of 10. In 2005, however, the inclusion by film director Jim Jarmusch of half a dozen pieces by Astatke in the soundtrack to his comedy-drama film Broken Flowers, starring Bill Murray, brought the music to a wider public, and the series was extended to 29 volumes.

Mulatu's influence was now spreading internationally. National Public Radio in the US used his instrumentals as beds under or between pieces, notably on the programme This American Life and his music was sampled by some of the leading lights in modern hip hop including Nas & Damian Marley, Kanye West and Madlib.

After meeting the Massachusetts-based Either/Orchestra in Addis Ababa in 2004, Mulatu began a collaboration with the band beginning with performances in Scandinavia in summer 2006 and a full European tour in 2008. In the Autumn of 2008, following a gig at London's Cargo, he began a long relationship with the Strut label in the UK, collaborating with London-based collective The Heliocentrics on the album Inspiration Information Vol. 3 which combined re-workings of his Ethio-jazz classics with new co-composed material.

During the late 2000s, Astatke began devoting energy to "celebrating the original scientists from the tribes of Ethiopia, the unheralded people who created our traditional instruments." In 2008, he completed a fellowship at Radcliffe Institute within Harvard University, where he worked on modernising traditional Ethiopian instruments and premiered a portion of a new opera, The Yared Opera. He served as an Abramowitz Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, giving lectures and workshops and advising MIT Media Lab on creating a modern version of the krar, the traditional Ethiopian lyre.

On 1 February 2009, Mulatu performed at the Luckman Auditorium in Los Angeles as part of the Timeless concert series with a band that included Bennie Maupin and Phil Ranelin. He also released a 2CD compilation album sold exclusively to passengers of Ethiopian Airlines, combining styles from different regions of Ethiopia and a selection of studio originals. His revival continued with the Mulatu Steps Ahead album recorded for Strut in 2010, which brought together the core of his current live touring band for the first time. On 12th May 2012, he received an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee College Of Music.

During this period, Mulatu began to build his Jazz Village project in Addis. Starting as an educational programme and live music space, it later moved to the Ghion Hotel and now operates as the leading jazz club in Addis, showcasing both local musicians and internationally touring artists.

By the mid-2010s, Mulatu had taken Ethio Jazz to every major continent through his touring schedule, constantly gaining new fans of all ages along the way. He has collaborated regularly during that time, recording with Australian band Black Jesus Experience on the album Cradle Of Humanity which premiered at the Melbourne Jazz Festival in 2016 followed by a full tour of Australia and New Zealand. He has also featured on the 'Freedom Fables' album by soul / jazz collective Nubiyan Twist and recorded with Hoodna Orchestra during 2024.

During 2024, Mulatu's career hit another pinnacle with a Summer U.S. tour including a performance at the Hollywood Bowl as part of the Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival co-curated by Kamasi Washington alongside major concerts in San Francisco, New York and Washington DC.

For 2025, the Father of Ethio Jazz begins a major farewell international tour and will release a new studio album, Mulatu Plays Mulatu, for Strut. Recorded at London's RAK Studios and at his Jazz Village club in Addis, the album features his full big band performing alongside Ethiopian cultural musicians and stands as a fitting climax to an incredible career. "Throughout my life, I wanted to bring Ethio jazz to all corners of the world for people to enjoy and I feel that I have succeeded in that," says Mulatu. The world of music would definitely echo those sentiments.