Playing in London for the first time in 15 years Ethiopian jazz and funk pioneer Mulatu Astatke, plays an exclusive one off live date at Cargo. Malcolm Catto’s Heliocentrics will back Astatke, and perform a set of their own original music as well.

Born in Ethiopia in 1943, Mulatu Astatke studied music in London before journeying to the USA in the mid 1960s. In New York City, he embraced the latin and jazz sides of the musical spectrum, and succeeded in releasing two LPs on the obscure Worthy Label (Afro Latin Soul Volumes 1 and 2) before returning to Addis Ababa to introduce jazz to his fellow Ethiopians. Ethiopian music is largely vocal, and Astatke’s instrumental compositions for the start up label Amha languished as minor sellers. However, he produced and arranged many “pop” songs for vocal artists on Amha and Phillips Ethiopia, many of which contained latin, funk and jazz elements.

In the early 70s, after Amha released his first LP (a collection of previously released 7” singles), Astatke released his groundbreaking Mulatu of Ethiopia album on Worthy. This album, sampled by the likes of J-Live and Madlib, hit the hip hop “beat digging” community hard in the mid 1990s, when copies of the record  often changed hands at the legendary New York City record convention held at the Roosevelt Hotel.

In the mid 70s, Astatke released his Ethio-Jazz album on Amha – a rallying cry to Ethiopian instrumental music if there ever was one. Sadly, the record saw release around the time of political revolution in Ethiopia, as the “enlightened dictator” Haile Selassiie was deposed in a coup. A few short years later, and Ethiopian albums and 45s were no longer produced in any notable quantities; it would be the mid 1980s before Mulatu would release an album again.

Now, due in part to his rediscovery in the hip hop community, the wide success of the Ethiopiques compilations, his soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers and his regular lectures at Harvard, Astatke is enjoying quite the rediscovery.

He couldn’t pick a better backing band, as the members of the Heliocentrics are deep fans of Astatke’s work, and Ethiopian’s 60s and 70s musical revolution as well.

MULATU ASTATKE
+ http://rbmaradio.com/ARCHIVE.153.0.php Radio show on RBMA Radio
+ http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/LECTURES.95.0.html Red Bull Music Academy Lecture

MORE INFO:
+ http://www.ethiojazz.com
+ http://www.myspace.com/heliocentrics
+ http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com
+ http://www.cargo-london.com

Home > News > Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics