In Jim Jarmusch’s 2005 film Broken Flowers, Bill Murray drives around America listening to a mixtape of strange, hypnotic music. Much of it was recorded in Addis Ababa in the early 1970s by Mulatu Astatke.
Mulatu Astatke was born in 1943 in Jimma, in south-western Ethiopia. As a young man he was sent abroad to study, first in Wales, then in London, and later at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he is often described as the first African student. He studied vibraphone, percussion and arranging.
Ethio-jazz
In New York in the 1960s, Mulatu worked with Latin musicians and began combining jazz and Latin rhythms with the modes, or qenet, of Ethiopian music, whose four main forms are tezeta, bati, ambassel and anchihoye. The result, which he called Ethio-jazz, sounded unlike anything else: brooding melodies, vibraphone, horns, organ and loping grooves.
The golden age of Addis
Returning to Ethiopia, Mulatu recorded in Addis Ababa during a golden era of Ethiopian popular music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when bands played in nightclubs and hotels under Emperor Haile Selassie. He arranged and recorded for other singers as well as his own projects.
The 1974 revolution brought the Derg military government, which imposed curfews and restrictions that choked the nightlife and the recording industry. Many musicians left the country.
Éthiopiques
In 1998, the French label Buda Musique released a volume dedicated to Mulatu in its Éthiopiques series of reissues of Ethiopian recordings. The series introduced the golden age of Ethiopian music to listeners worldwide.
Broken Flowers
Jarmusch’s use of Mulatu’s music in Broken Flowers brought Ethio-jazz to cinema audiences. Mulatu’s career revived, and he toured internationally, collaborating with younger musicians, including the London band the Heliocentrics on the album Inspiration Information.
Legacy
Mulatu is known as the father of Ethio-jazz. Hip-hop producers have sampled his recordings, and bands around the world play his compositions. He has also taught and promoted Ethiopian music, arguing that its modes deserve the same study as Western scales.
Listening
“Yègellé Tezeta”, “Tezeta” and “Yekermo Sew” are good starting points. The Éthiopiques compilation of his work is the essential album.
He brought Ethiopian scales to New York in the 1960s. Forty years later, a film director brought them back to American cars, and a new audience asked who was playing.
