Mulatu Astatke - Mulatu Of Ethiopia [Strut]

Strut presents the first official reissue of a seminal album in the history of African music: Mulatu Of Ethiopia by Mulatu Astatke, from 1972. Recorded in New York, the album appeared at a time when Astatke was already beginning to master the delicate fusion of styles necessary to create Ethio-jazz. “I left the UK to go to America and studied at Berklee College in Boston. I learned the technical aspects of jazz and gained a beautiful understanding of many types of music. That’s where I got my tools. Berklee really shook me up.”

Traveling frequently to the Big Apple to play and see live concerts at the Cheetah, the Palladium, and the Village Gate, Astatke met producer Gil Snapper on that circuit. “Gil was a kind and very interesting guy. He produced music and worked with all kinds of musicians.” That encounter would lead to a series of albums on Snapper’s Worthy label. The first, Afro Latin Soul, documented Astatke's new directions. “Mulatu has created a new sound,” Snapper celebrated on the back cover. “He has taken the ancient pentatonic scales of Asia and Africa and woven them into something unique and exciting; a blend of three cultures: Ethiopian, Puerto Rican, and American.”

A second volume of Afro Latin Soul appeared later, before Astatke continued to polish his sound, incorporating funk and Azmari “chik-chikka” rhythms into the mix. Back in a downtown Manhattan studio with Snapper and working with some of the city’s best young jazz and Latin session musicians, Mulatu Of Ethiopia began to take shape. “We rehearsed for 3 or 4 weeks,” Astatke recalls. “It took them a while to find the right feel in the music.”

The resulting album represented the first fully formed document of Astatke’s distinctive Ethio-jazz sound. It includes ‘Kulunmanqueleshi’, ‘Dewel’, and ‘Kasalefku-Hulu’, tracks that Mulatu would frequently revisit on singles and live performances, in addition to the Ethio-Latin exercise ‘Chifara’ and the eponymous groove ‘Mulatu’ (“I wanted to do a track for… myself!”).