Mulatu Astatke: Ethio-jazz Pioneer Bids UK Farewell at 82
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- Mulatu Astatke, 82, delivered what is expected to be his last UK performance at London's Royal Festival Hall in June, six decades after he first arrived in the country to study aeronautical engineering in Wrexham, north Wales.
- He developed Ethio-jazz by layering Ethiopian pentatonic scales with Western jazz, funk, and Afro-Latin rhythms using traditional instruments including the krar, masenqo, and kebero, calling the fusion 'a beautiful science.'
- In the late 1960s, Astatke shuttled between New York — where his Ethiopian Quintet recorded the albums Afro-Latin Soul 1 & 2 — and Addis Ababa, where he began recording singles for Amha Records, Ethiopia's first independent label, in 1969.
- He performed alongside Duke Ellington in Addis Ababa in 1973 during Ellington's state-sponsored tour of Ethiopia and Zambia; Ellington told him he 'never expected this from an African' after hearing the saxophone section play Ethio-jazz.
- Astatke trained at London's Trinity College of Music and became the first African student at Boston's Berklee College of Music, later befriending Ronnie Scott and saxophonist Joe Harriott across Soho's clubs.
- He repeatedly credits Ethiopia's indigenous communities for Western musical innovation, comparing the Derashe tribe's diminished scales to Charlie Parker's and sixth-century Aksumite composer St Yared's notations to Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's: 'Who is first?'
- Astatke opened Addis Ababa's African Jazz Village in 2013, now run by his son, and plans a new album featuring musicians from Ethiopia's rural communities alongside Addis-based players; his latest, 'Mulatu Plays Mulatu,' is out on Strut Records.
Why it matters: Astatke's farewell concert caps a 60-year career that put Ethiopian music on the global jazz map, from 1960s Soho jam sessions to a 1973 stage alongside Duke Ellington. His insistence that indigenous Ethiopian communities deserve credit for scales attributed to Charlie Parker directly challenges the standard Western narrative of jazz's origins, while the African Jazz Village he founded in Addis Ababa in 2013 ensures a venue for the next generation of Ethiopian musicians he has spent decades promoting.
