The Ongoing Rediscovery Of Mulatu Astatke

The last time we checked in with Ethiopian jazz pioneer/composer/multi-tasker Mulatu Astatke, we spent some time pondering how to categorize his "Ethio-jazz." It's his term for his hybrid of Ethiopian pentatonic scale modes and Afro-American jazz — usually expressed with plenty of other stuff mixed up in there, too.

This go around, there's too much to announce in the first place to worry about such semantics.

First, the vibraphonist (among other instruments) has a new album out called Mulatu Steps Ahead. Members of Boston's Either/Orchestra, a group that started arranging Ethiopian popular music for itself around 1997, are backing him up, as are a number of U.K.-based musicians. He's also employing the talents of a few Ethiopian artists based in Addis Ababa.

Here's the song "Green Africa," which you can download for free in exchange for an e-mail address:

"Green Africa," from Mulatu Astatke, Mulatu Steps Ahead (Strut). Released March 30, 2010.

Purchase: Amazon.com / Amazon MP3 / iTunes

This comes on the heels of last year's Inspiration Information Vol. 3, a groove-happy project made with the Heliocentrics (members of which appear on this new album as well). Later last year, we also saw the emergence of New York-Addis-London, an anthology of Astatke's recordings from the '60s and '70s. A few months before any of that was released, he recorded a big band concert in Los Angeles with help from semi-legendary instrumentalists Phil Ranelin, Azar Lawrence and Bennie Maupin. And soon, that's coming out as part of a 3-DVD box set called Timeless (the other two discs are large-ensemble concerts of music by Arthur Verocai and J. Dilla, he said, hyperventilating). Here's a preview of the Mulatu DVD:

 

Mulatu Astatke's early records have been popular among hip-hop producers and beat-junkie cratediggers for some time, but name recognition burst beyond the cult crowd in 2005 when his music was featured in the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers. A few years later, he participated in a fellowship at Harvard, where he wrote (much of) an opera. He tours with some frequency still. And the rhythm addicts haven't abandoned him either; his tune "Yegelle Tezeta" ...

... was sampled for the upcoming Nas and Damian Marley record Distant Relatives, on the song "As We Enter":

In other words, in his mid-60s, Mulatu Astatke — who played jazz in London, Boston and New York before recording "Ethio-jazz" — seems to be enjoying one of the more prolific periods of his career to date, with recognition to boot. Call it a renaissance, perhaps. As to what to call his music — well, if you hear what I do, "enjoyable" comes to mind.

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Related At NPR Music: A 2009 News And Notes interview with Mulatu Astatke, and also that previous blog post.