Ethiopian Jazz Music 
Mulatu Astatke, the father of Ethiopian jazz
Baobab/ The Economist
ONSTAGE 68-year-old Mulatu Astatke is as subtle and understated as the Ethiopian jazz he created. The music, a hybrid of traditional Ethiopian music and jazz, is subdued, somewhat melancholy, and at times psychedelic. Mr Astatke, the originator and composer of songs in this canon, plays his principal instrument, the vibraphone, with a light touch. Between songs, there is no small talk. He thanks the crowd, and coolly introduces the next number.
Mr Astatke has completed a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard and been an artist-in-residence at MIT in recent years. But the seeds of his “Ethio-jazz” were planted in the 1950s and 1960s when he studied classical and jazz composition in Britain and America and honed his techniques while at Berklee College of Music, where he was the first African student. On visits to New York he hung out with jazz musicians such as John Coltrane and performed with the Duke Ellington orchestra in Ethiopia in the 1970s.
Mr Astatke’s name resurfaced in 2005, when his compositions appeared in the soundtrack of Jim Jarmusch’s film Broken Flowers. A busy time of performing, recording, teaching, and composing has since followed.
Mr Astatke is doing a world tour at the moment and Baobab spoke to him on his London stop when he performed at the Barbican Centre with the London-based group, The Heliocentrics.
Baobab: While at Berklee in the late 1950s and early 1960s, you started to combine what you were learning about jazz theory with the Ethiopian music you had grown up with. How did that happen?
Mulatu Astatke: My experiences in Boston and New York opened my eyes. I became a student of jazz composition and learnt how the music comes together. It helped me quite a lot, and helped me to find Ethio-jazz. There were so many great musicians at that time, and I lined up with everyone else to watch them. I met John Coltrane, I saw Bud Powell. Now I see people lining up to see me in Paris and Berlin. That's so beautiful to me. I’ve been very lucky.
Baobab: Since then you seem to have focused on fusing traditional Ethiopian music with jazz and worked hard to develop a distinct voice and style. Is that fair?
MA: Fusion and contribution, that’s my thing. There have been tribes in Ethiopia for centuries. Then we see Charlie Parker and the music he’s playing using diminished chords. I always say that Africa gave to jazz its whole feeling and conception. Not only the drums, but the science. Musicians are like scientists, just with different chemicals. There’s no difference between science and music, we just deal with sound. We are scientists of sound.
Baobab: Ethio-jazz has a melancholy sound to it. Why is that?
MA: We play five against twelve. This is a pentatonic scale that has been fused with a 12-tone progression. My thing was to combine these two without losing our character. The five is floating on top. You see this in Asia, in Japan, in Algeria. We have four different modes, and three modes for church music. It’s very beautiful. It’s all in how you approach the scales and the notes.
Baobab: You’ve opened a jazz village in Addis to train young Ethiopian musicians. What are your goals for the centre?
MA: It’s an information centre. We host jazz concerts and Ethiopian plays, and teach Ethio-jazz. We want to promote music to young pupils who have talent but who have never had a chance. We’re teaching the science of music—arranging, composing. I tell my students, learn the science of music first, don’t just jump in too quick. There is a line you have to follow.
Baobab: What kind of music are your students interested in?
MA: Lots want to study Ethio-jazz, but many like dancehall, reggae and hip hop—music with more dancing and jumping. There are few outlets for classical and jazz. There are more and more guitar and bass players now because all they see on television is people with guitars jumping up and down.
Baobab: Your music was featured in the soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch’s 2005 film Broken Flowers. How did that collaboration come together?
MA: I was playing in New York and I was told he was coming to the show. I didn't know who he was but said to invite him anyway. He said he had been looking for the right music for his film for six years, and he thought my music was it. I said "no problem". Six months later he called, and that was it. And people have loved it.
Baobab: In what other ways has your music reached a wider audience?
MA: I’ve been sampled by hip-hop artists like Naz and now the Somali rapper K’Naan. Man, it’s exploding, I tell you.
Baobab: You recently composed a score for an Ethiopian film called “Lalumbe.” How did you approach the project?
MA: The film is a love story about people from the Hamer tribe in the south of Ethiopia. This was the first time I've worked with their tribal music and culture—hey hold drums on their back and jump and clap. I used different instruments and dancers to create beautiful fusion music for the film.
Baobab: You’re also working on an opera. How is it shaping up?
MA: I’m still working on it. The composition includes excerpts from Ethiopian hymns for Lent. The opera will include choirs, strings, trombones, and an ancient Ethiopian conducting stick. I hope to perform it in a church in Lalibela in North Ethiopia that is carved from a single stone and also in Europe. I decided to work on this project while I was at Harvard. It will be a big challenge for me but I want to see what people will say.
Baobab: Do you think that the music you’ve created over the years is revolutionary?
MA: It’s a cultural revolution. Why not give the world something different?. As long as you can play your own music and combine it with something else, you will have no problems. But it is a challenge, a beautiful and great challenge.
Drop me at Fendika: Second home
By Tibebeselassie Tigabu (Reporter)
The contemporary club scene in Addis has been overflowing with Jazz music. Even on week days one can easily find clubs that play exclusively jazz and jazz-fusion.
Jazz clubs have continued to dominate the club scene, pushing out competing clubs that play other genres of music, such as reggae.
Apart from the clubs, there are the Azmari bets. With wicked humor and shrewd metaphors, they can have a tendency to offend, and most have certainly abandoned the tradition of story telling through music.
It’s surprising to see the Azmari bets evolve in to this trend, especially being from a country considered a poet of nations. The poems, the smiles, and the mythology appear to never have existed in this country when compared with the contemporary Azmari bets.
Born from the frustration of the Azmari bets and the commercial clubs, a club called Fendika, located around Kezanchis was founded last year in hopes to offer a glimpse of traditional Ethiopian music in Addis.
Melaku Belay, a dancer and choreographer, and two of his friends Misale Legesse and Idris Hassen established a band called Ethio-color hoping to demonstrate the diversified culture of Ethiopia.
Ethio- color came to feel the gap they had sensed. Having a full band with traditional Ethiopian instruments and dancers, they are attempting to offer a new sound, to transform the trend of Azmari bets, and to bring out the true colors of Ethiopian music and Azmari bets.
They don’t confine themselves to the traditional music either. They fuss it with jazz, improvise every week, are open to experimentation, and try to explore different culture’s music, such as Gamo, Wolayita, Agaw, but exclude the conventional Amharic, Tigrigna, and Oromigna styles.
As the founder Melaku Belay tells the story, the inspiration came from Hizib le Hizib, a show organized to bring all different cultures together, and as a ‘thank you’ to the people who sent aid and helped Ethiopia prevent total starvation in the devastating 1985 Ethiopian famine.
“When we hear about music or shows we seem to glorify the past. It’s like we’re not living in the present, but rather we are recalling the past and living in past glory. We should appreciate the past because it’s our foundation but we should also do something to change the situation we’re in now. This generation should also leave a legacy,” Melaku commented.
Fendika is also trying to follow in the footsteps of Hizib le Hizib, they try to bring in musicians from all the different corners of the country and give them a chance to tell their stories in their own ways.
“We don’t want to run like other clubs where one person sings all sorts of songs from other cultures. It’s like the ferenjis trying to sing our song, that’s what the other people feel when we sing their song, so we bring people from the respective area to keep the originality,“ explained Melaku.
On Fridays once every two weeks, Fendika, a small place, is crowded with people wanting to hear our music. What’s surprising are the countless people who return and the persistent ones who, even if they can’t get in, will stand outside listening by the window.
“I believe culture grows… it progresses through the years and that’s what we are giving on Fridays… there are things we took from our parents but we add our own things, experiences and identity,” added Melaku.
They take our ancestors’ music and tell the different stories with it by blending it with jazz, funk,and rock giving us what we call, “City identity music.”
The nights always start with the two DJs, Yonathan and Kidus, exploring traditional Ethiopian music that isn’t played anywhere else and reminding us of the time when music began to be recorded here in Ethiopia.
For around two hours they play this music, taking us back in time, like a time machine with musicians like Kassa Tessema, Teshome Mitiku, and others who remind many people to recall the golden age in Ethiopian music story and you might wonder if you hear songs for the first time in this place and makes you wonder why these songs and legacies are forgotten by the different medias.
After that the Ethio-color band takes place with different tunes, showing Ethiopia in a glance through music and you get to listen to the famous song Alemye Sora and to singers like Maritu Legesse and Zinet Muhaba who seem outdated now.
Hand in hand with the songs, dance also continues to make your body to move involuntarily with every beat and to offer what you have, It's mainly Melaku who plays with that enthusiastic feeling.
Drinking Tej, Araki and sitting in a stool a.k.a Berchuma you feel like you are in a different place and at this stage you seem to understand why all this waiting in the queue, was good for.
The fierce looks on the Wolayitigna singer when he sings, the fresh sound of Selamnesh Zemene, the bands' and dancers, improvisation and people like Teferi, a famous drummer jamming with them out of no where, make your Friday unforgettable and second home.
“It was not was easy road for us. We struggled every day to get here. Now we got to a stage where we have international concerts and tours including the Zanzibar festival where we made it to the top five bands and also in playing with renowned bands like the Red Hot Chilly peppers here in Addis. There are many people who supported us and still are like Teferi, Jorga, Fasil Wuhib, all these believe in us and are all in the way with us.” Reveals Melaku
Ethio-color is not only famous in Addis but also abroad where they get to travel to many places every now and then telling a distinctive Ethiopian story through music and dance.
With the growth of cities and the different medias people seem to drift to the Western culture and way of life and this situation scares Melaku which made him to think of a simple way to pass it to the next generation.
“Now is the time for our culture, for Ethiopia. The young generation doesn’t know about Ethiopian identity and its manifestation. The people who seem to know the culture are also not showing it in a right way so we want show what to the right way is.” Melaku reveals
As Melaku tells when they started it was with their pocket money. Especially Melaku. He spend the money he got from the different tours but this was all a blessing for him when he saw the result.
“I worked in this place for more than 13 years and in those years I was doing it for free. I used to get only award money from my performance on the stage. When we started it also it was a bit difficult because I have to pay money for the Azmaris which is not a trend for the other Azmari bets. So we wanted to be the first to pay for the Azmaris so they can’t perform because of the award,” Melaku reveals
On the weekdays the other Azmaris perform the different genres of Ethiopian traditional music about the issues that intrigue the society.
“We use Fendika as a platform where through tradition we encourage creativity of the young talents still showing the true culture and it is also open for improvisation of the dance and the music.” Says Melaku
Now he believes Fendika is possible to have different festivals, dance trainings, workshops, painting exhibitions so it could be an art center for Ethiopian art so Ethiopians and people who appreciate Ethiopian art can come and get to know their roots.
“People love Fendika. They come and spend the whole night there. Our performance is different on weekly basis but when you see the other clubs they don’t perform live music rather they synthesize the music which is killing the traditional music. So our main purpose is to promote live music in Ethiopia.” Reveals Melaku
Despite the different tours they have abroad and in the different cities of Ethiopia, they also seem to manage to perform in Fendika.
Many people seem to appreciate what they done to the club but as Melaku tells it is a struggle everyday.
“As you can see the place is very small but the rent is very expensive. We don’t have entrance money and the people don’t drink. I am not saying they should drink but it’s kind of difficult when you establish your club only to promote art.” Melaku concludes
Finally Melaku invites the people to come on the eve of Ethiopian New Year celebration where singers like Yohannes Afework and Alemayehu Fanta will play at that night apart of the Azmaris.
Ethiopian Jazz: Thrilling Music That You Should Hear
Contemporary Ethiopian musicians reinvigorate traditional jazz stylings for new audiences in America and Addis Ababa.
By: Salamishah Tillet
During the second half of the 20th century, cosmopolitan Ethiopians were delighted to see jazz giant Duke Ellington receive their country's Medal of Honor from Emperor Haile Selassie. At the same time, by contrast, a Berklee College of Music-trained Ethiopian jazz legend, Mulatu Astatke, who fused jazz and funk with his country's folk and Coptic Church melodies, was unknown in the United States.
In the 1960s, as the tastes of American jazz fans shifted from bebop to avant-garde, Ethiopian musicians were establishing a tradition whose compositions are just reaching American ears. Why did it take so long for this riveting, emotionally charged music to arrive? Ethiopian musicians like Astatke, singer Alemayehu Eshete, and guitarist and arranger Girma Beyene have devoted their lives to blending Ethiopia's traditional five tones per octave, or pentatonic scale, with Western chords. Listening to the music they have produced shows the variety of influences on their approach to jazz.
Astatke traveled to London, Boston and New York in the 1960s, where he heard African-American and Latin jazz to which he added pentatonic scales. This spawned "Ethio Jazz."
Eshete and Beyene created a subgenre called swinging Addis by combining the songs they learned from the Ethiopian Police Band and the Haile Selassie I Theatre Orchestra with the rhythms they heard on the records of Sam Cooke, Nat King Cole and James Brown, brought to Ethiopia by Peace Corps volunteers. As Ethiopian musicologist Simeneh Betreyohannes says, "Most Ethiopian jazz artists did not go abroad; music was their way of traveling." The result is music that is primeval and present-day. French musical curator Francis Falceto was so entranced by the music's rawness and funky, haunting virtuosity that he has spent 30 years collecting it. The result is a monumental 23-volume series, much of it available on Zefene, called Éthiopiques. Read More..
Ethiopian jazz legend Mulatu Astatke.
yegelle tezeta mulatu and the heliocentrics live
Most Americans got their first taste of Ethiopop from ‘Broken Flowers‘ the 2005 Jim Jarmusch film which featured a soundtrack by Ethiopian jazz legend Mulatu Astatke.
Mulatu Astatke to Release Career Retrospective on Strut
Vibraphone and keyboard player, master arranger and bandleader, Mulatu Astatke is one of the all time greats of Ethiopian music, and the creator of his own original music form, Ethio jazz. Through the acclaimed Ethiopiques album series ...He became the first African student to attend Harvard and he lived and recorded in New York, developing a unique sound that fused Western jazz with traditional Ethiopian melodies. Read More
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Elilta: Ethiopian Classical Music by Girma Yifrashewa; Girma Yifrashewa, piano
Girma Yifrashewa first saw a piano at age 16, yet he earned two degrees in piano, and in 2002 became the first Ethiopian classical pianist to tour widely in Africa, visiting 11 countries. He composed all six works on his 2006 classical CD, Elilta.
He will be performing at UCLA on October 22-25, 2009. Check out the flyer . Read More
Grammy Nominated Wayna Readies New EP 'Soul And The City'
Ethiopian born R&B songstress Wayna has teamed up with DC's rising star Wale to remix 'Billyclub' a song about police brutality. Wayna also resides in the D.C area. She's a 2009 Grammy nominated artist and now in the running for 2010 in two categories. She's also performing on a Billie Holliday Tribute at Blues Alley – Wednesday, October 21st- 8PM and 10PM in D.C. Read More
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