Mulatu Astatke and the Invention of Ethio-Jazz

A musician between three continents

Mulatu was born in Jimma, Ethiopia, in 1943 and sent abroad to study. He trained in Wales and London and then at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he is usually described as the school's first African student. In New York in the mid-60s he played with Latin musicians and recorded the Afro-Latin Soul albums, where you can hear him working out how Ethiopian melody sits over mambo and boogaloo rhythms.

Back in Addis Ababa at the turn of the 70s he found a city in the middle of a musical boom: nightclubs, big bands, and independent labels such as Amha Records pressing singles and albums by singers like Mahmoud Ahmed and Alèmayèhu Eshèté. Mulatu arranged and played on many of these sessions and released his own instrumental records. The boom ended abruptly after the 1974 revolution, when the military government's curfews and censorship shut down the nightlife.

What makes it sound Ethiopian

Ethiopian music is built on a small set of pentatonic modes, called qenet, with names such as tezeta, bati, ambassel and anchihoye. Several of them use intervals that sound minor and slightly unresolved to Western ears, which is exactly what gives Ethio-jazz its haunted, late-night character. Mulatu's trick was to keep those modes in the melody while the band played jazz voicings and Latin or funk rhythms underneath.

• •Vibraphone or organ carrying a pentatonic melody line
• •Horns in unison, often with a wide, slightly rough tone
• •Congas and a loose, rolling drum pattern rather than a straight backbeat
• •Space: tempos are often moderate, and arrangements leave long gaps between phrases

The revival

For years these records were almost impossible to find outside Ethiopia. That changed with the Éthiopiques series on the French label Buda Musique, compiled by Francis Falceto from the late 1990s onward; volume four is devoted to Mulatu's instrumental work. Then Jim Jarmusch used his music throughout the 2005 film Broken Flowers, and a new generation discovered him. He has since recorded with the London group the Heliocentrics on Inspiration Information (2009) and toured widely.

Hip hop found him too: Nas and Damian Marley built "As We Enter" on Mulatu's "Yègellé Tezeta". Once you know the sound, you will start hearing those modes in beat-scene productions everywhere.

Records to start with

• •Mulatu Astatke: Mulatu of Ethiopia (1972)
• •Mulatu Astatke: Ethio Jazz (1972)
• •Mulatu Astatke & His Ethiopian Quintet: Afro-Latin Soul (1966)
• •Éthiopiques, Vol. 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale 1969–1974
• •Mulatu Astatke & the Heliocentrics: Inspiration Information (2009)
• •Mahmoud Ahmed: Éthiopiques, Vol. 7: Erè Mèla Mèla

Sampling notes

Ethio-jazz loops work best when you keep the modal character intact: chop a full phrase rather than a single chord, because the colour lives in the melody. The drums are often loose and roomy, so many producers layer their own kick and snare under the original rather than sampling a break. Pitching down a few semitones exaggerates the moody quality; pitching up can make the horns sound brittle.

Dig it on CrateDrop

Filter to Jazz or Folk, World & Country, set the country to Ethiopia and the years to 1966–1975. The catalogue is small, so you will hit the same musicians quickly, which is the point: follow the arrangers and the backing bands (the Walias Band and the Ibex Band are two names that recur) and the scene opens up.