Mulatu Astatke

Mulatu Astatke (surname also spelled Astatqé) is an Ethiopian musician and arranger. He is known as the father of Ethio-jazz. Born in 1943 in the western Ethiopian city of Jimma, Mulatu was musically trained in London, New York City, and Boston, where he was the first African student at Berklee College of Music. He would later combine his jazz and Latin music influences with traditional Ethiopian music.


He has worked with many influential jazz artists such as Duke Ellington during the 1970s. After meeting the Massachusetts-based Either Orchestra in Addis Ababa in 2004, Mulatu began a collaboration with the band which continues today, with the most recent performances in Scandinavia in summer 2006 & Toronto in summer 2008. Mulatu's signature instrument is the vibraphone.

In 2005, his music appeared on the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers. Also, Volume 4 of the Ethiopiques series is devoted entirely to his music. Mulatu has also produced songs for many artists from East Africa, in particular Mahmoud Ahmed.


He has recently released an album sold exclusively to passengers of Ethiopian Airlines. It is a 2-disc set, the first one being a compilation of the different styles from different regions of Ethiopia, and the second being studio originals.

Mulatu recently completed a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University where he worked on modernizations of traditional Ethiopian instruments and premiered a portion of a new opera, "The Yared Opera."1 Currently, Mulatu is an Abramowitz Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. In addition to a lecture and workshops, Mulatu will be working with the MIT Media Lab on creating a modern version of the krarr, a traditional Ethiopian instrument. [wikipedia]