Mulatu Astatke

Ethiopian musician Mulatu Astatke, whose name appears as Astatqé on his French releases and who plays piano, organ, vibraphone, and percussion, ranks as a household name at home, where he is recognized as the father of Ethio-jazz, the distinctive fusion of pop, modern jazz, traditional Ethiopian music, Latin rhythms, Caribbean reggae, and Afro-funk. He shaped this approach during a period in the United States that produced two influential mid-1960s albums, then spent much of the 1970s pushing Ethiopian music further by working both domestically and internationally with figures such as Mahmoud Ahmed and Duke Ellington while issuing well-received recordings on Amha Eshete’s Amha Records. His profile rose again among Western listeners in the mid-2000s once selections of his music appeared in Jim Jarmusch’s film Broken Flowers, after which he sustained creative growth through the 2010s and continued longstanding partnerships with Boston’s Either/Orchestra, London’s the Heliocentrics, and Australia’s Black Jesus Experience.

Born in 1943 in the western Ethiopian city of Jimma, Mulatu pursued musical studies in London, New York City, and Boston, becoming the first African graduate of the Berklee College of Music and later performing with several prominent jazz musicians, among them a 1971 guest appearance alongside Duke Ellington. Additional experience in New York dance clubs during the 1960s preceded his three New York–recorded albums: Afro-Latin Soul, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 in 1966 and Mulatu of Ethiopia in 1972. The majority of his output appeared on Amha Records, encompassing numerous singles plus the 1974 album Ethio Jazz. By emphasizing instrumentation and rhythm within Ethiopian pop, his contributions helped usher in a golden age for the country’s pop and jazz scenes between 1968 and 1974. He later established a music school, launched his own club, and remained active as an arranger, advisor, and DJ.

In 2004 he encountered the Massachusetts-based Either/Orchestra, initiating an enduring collaboration. The placement of his compositions on the soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s 2005 film Broken Flowers brought him to fresh listeners, while his growing impact on Western music became audible in hip-hop artists including Quantic, Nas, Madlib, and Kanye West, each of whom has sampled his recordings. Never content to limit his artistic scope, Mulatu joined the London psych-jazz ensemble the Heliocentrics in 2008 for the album Inspiration Information, Vol. 3, which featured refreshed renditions of several signature works. Concurrently he completed a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University, where he assisted in updating traditional Ethiopian instruments and presented excerpts from the opera The Yared Opera on which he had been working. His Massachusetts activities also encompassed an Abramowitz Artist-in-Residence position at M.I.T., during which he supported development of a contemporary version of the traditional Ethiopian krar.

The largely improvised Mulatu Steps Ahead, recorded with Either/Orchestra and the Heliocentrics, appeared in 2010. The 2013 release Sketches of Ethiopia, issued on the Jazz Village label, took the shape of a jazz suite. In partnership with longtime associates Black Jesus Experience he recorded Cradle of Humanity in 2016, and a further project with the same ensemble produced the exploratory To Know Without Knowing in 2020.