You’d expect a conversation with Mulatu Astatke to be about music. He is, after all, the father of a musical genre: Ethio-jazz. But when he talks about the art form, he tends to focus on its ...

It is bold indeed for any jazz artist to evoke Miles Davis' landmark album Sketches of Spain. But Mulatu Astatke, like Miles, is a true original. The music Astatke first imagined 40 years ago sounds ...

Admas draws from and rearranges “golden era” Ethiopian music with then-fairly-new synthesizer and drum-machine rhythms. Steve Kiviat Admas. From left, clockwise: Abegasu Shiota, Henock Temesgen, ...

Ethiopian jazz master Mulatu Astatke took a break from his extensive 2018 European concert tour to play at the 19th Cape Town International Jazz Festival. This should come as no surprise given that he ...

Earlier this year I wrote a shopping guide for Ethiopian music in Indianapolis. Over the years Indy has hosted a handful of grocery stores and restaurants retailing the East African nation's music. It ...

In Hindu cosmology, the world is traditionally depicted as a dome resting on the backs of four strong elephants, who themselves stand on the shell of a giant tortoise. In the traditional music of the ...

Most of us don’t think of music as a science. Mulatu Astatke, the Ethiopian vibraphonist who created the style known as “Ethio-jazz,” says he’s never thought of his invention as anything else. “I’ve ...

ADDIS ABABA, April 30 (Reuters) - Young Ethiopians packed into the compound of the Swedish embassy in Addis Ababa on Saturday night to savour an "Ethio Jazz" performance, an annual festival that ...

When the band QWANQWA takes the stage of the BU Global Music Festival on Saturday, Sept. 17, it’ll be making its Boston debut — as are five of the other groups playing the free event. But if the ...

Ethiopia enjoys a rich tradition of enticing music, filled with asymmetric rhythms set to a haunting, five-note scale and sly double-entendre lyrics in the Amharic language. It's a shame that, for ...