Interview with Mulatu Astatke
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Mulatu Astatke, 67, as an extraordinary multi-instrumentalist, composer, and community builder; he is one of those rare individuals who has used his incredible talent as a tool to elevate social consciousness in the little-known neighborhood of Addis Ababa.

Among tight circles of the well informed — i.e., the beatmakers, musicians, and vinylphiles — Mulatu’s oeuvre, which spans four decades, has earned him a dedicated cult following. However, only as recently as the late 90’s did people finally take notice in the U.S., underpinned by Francis Falceto’s distribution of the Ethiopiques series, Buda_Musique . The eye-opening series single-handedly chronicled a wealth of 70’s Ethiopian soul & pop music that survived the Derg’s bloody military regime (1977-‘91), whose draconian laws repressed the cultural expression of the neighborhood.

For casual listeners, the discovering of Mulatu’s music has been largely fortuitous. Some caught its tail end as it dissipated into the club atmosphere like the diaphanous trails of a cigarette. Others have stumbled upon it through Jim Jarmusch’s film, Broken Flowers (2005). The movie’s soundtrack, composed principally by Mulatu, plays the alluring melodic counterpoint to Bill Murray‘s errant, rather stoical ‘Don Juan’ character, a man past his prime and internally grappling with mid-life crisis. Mulatu’s music provides emotional balm to an otherwise nerve-wracked road trip Murray takes in search of his estranged nineteen-year-old son.

Through a variety of platforms like these, Ethio-jazz reemerged onto the American scene, and Mulatu was regarded the hip innovator of jazz and Latin grooves. Yet when all was said and done, would he meet the same fate as other world musicians, his music gradually obscured by the dust-gathered shelves relegated to esoteric legends? It would seem that his story could have ended there. Instead, Mulatu chose to redefine the musician’s role. Rolling up his sleeves, he engaged himself in the two-pronged process of actively building the community within his hometown and raising public awareness in the global arena.

In 1958, Mulatu began his musical odyssey as the first African student to enroll at the prestigious Berklee College of Music. When asked to recall his experience, he responded that it was a rather “painful memory” due to feelings of isolation; he quickly countered, though, that “the teachers were amazing” and their “ways of teaching music so beautifully worked out that [students] were able to naturally understand jazz music.” Despite the emotional difficulties, his resilient spirit and top-notch education nurtured in him the desire to contribute to the vast lexicon of American jazz. What humbly started off as a student experiment forty years later became an internationally recognized form of music called Ethio-jazz: a syncretic style comprised of seductive Ethiopian melodies intertwined with American jazz and peppered with distant strains of reggae and funk backbeats.

Also around that time came President Kennedy’s landmark inauguration of a program that would forever change the cultural course of Ethiopians. His Peace Corps initiative led a large influx of American college students into the region of Addis Ababa. By virtue of the distinctly modern character it acquired through such intermingling, the neighborhood assumed the new identity of "Swinging Addis", a hip and progressive community where music reigned supreme. The youth touted the latest fashion, decked out in bell-bottoms and miniskirts and sporting huge ‘fros and beehives. Motown records were the hottest items, and the Addis youth quickly befriended the Americans who helped import their musical fix. Soon after, Ethiopian youths inspired by such Stax legends as Marvyn Gaye and James Brown concocted their own special brew of Ethiopian pop and soul.

This was the scene that Mulatu repatriated to after completing his musical education abroad in Europe and the States. He profoundly penetrated the very fabric of Addis’ cultural revolution by disseminating to the youth his unique instrumental invention, Ethio-Jazz; founded a music school, opened up a club, deejayed on the local radio station, and even hosted a television show on the history of Ethiopian indigenous music.

When Evil Monito had caught up with him, he was just finishing up his Radcliffe Fellowship (2007-08) at Harvard, and was performing valedictory concerts with the prestigious Either/Orchestra . During our candid interview, Mulatu was more than effusive and expressed a youthful fervor that belied his age as he openly divulged his passion for sound experimentations and redefining Ethiopian culture to the world.

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EM: Did you figure out early, while growing up as a kid in Addis Ababa, that you wanted to have a career in music?

Well, the problem with most [developing countries] is that music wasn’t taken very seriously. Science, like biology or chemistry, was given more importance in the education system. Actually, I had an early desire to become an aeronautical engineer, so I had the opportunity to go to an international school in North Wales that gave its students the freedom to try all different types of subjects, including music and the arts. I was one of the lucky few from my country to go to Europe and study. I didn’t necessarily grow up with music; actually, I was really involved in mathematics and physics. Because of that my approach to music is different from others’. As a scientist, you would mix chemicals; in the same manner I would mix sounds.

EM: Was there a pivotal moment at which you realized that engineering was not for you?

Well, I went to a science school in Birmingham [to study] aeronautics and then transferred to the Trinity College of Music in London. That’s where I was started playing with Edmundo Ros. He was the band leader of the top Latin group in London’s West End club scene. He owned a famous nightclub on Regent Street called the Edmundo Ros’ Dinner and Supper Club. It was popular [for its cosmopolitan atmosphere and music]. I began developing my music within these various scenes, which eventually led to my first record.

EM: When and where did you begin your recording career?

I created three albums starting in 1966 — that was all after leaving [Berklee] and going to New York to work at Hartnett Music Studios. Great musicians like Bud Powell and Charlie Byrd were teaching and playing there. I began teaching there also and developing my album called “Mulatu of Ethiopia (72)” which featured some of my Mango Santamaria musicians. The other two albums were called “Latin Soul, Vols. 1&2 (66).”

EM: Yes, that was one of the rare jazz compositions you produced while studying and teaching in the U.S. I see how you’ve developed the Latin flavor of your music; but how about the funk backbeats that constituted some of your sound?

Actually, while being in New York, I never really intended on using funk beats in the early recordings. The Ethiopian Quintet [formed with some Puerto Rican musicians] primarily used the connection between Latin and African music. If you go to Ethiopia, especially in the Southern region of the country, we have the same beats like traditional Western African beats which is the source of Latin Music. So I started off using the Ethiopian pentatonic (or five-tone) scales [similar to Indian and Arabic music], fusing it with the twelve-tone European scales, so that is the skeletal backbone of Ethio-Jazz form.

EM: What other reasons compelled you to experiment with Ethio-Jazz?

Well, the idea of Ethio-jazz also came from a desire to upgrade the Ethiopian instruments, which are usually based on the five-tone scales and modif[ied] so that we can play European music or jazz. So within this experiment, I used the karar [a bowl-shaped, six-stringed lyre traditionally made of wood, cloth and beads], one of the oldest Ethiopian instrument and upgrade[d] that instrument to play modern jazz. Those were complicated keys to play on the karar. We were able to accomplish that feat [by upgrading the instrument, commonly amplified—from eight strings, then to twelve] and this whole process was documented on Ethiopian television and we had a beautiful discussion about it. It was one of the most beautiful experiences in my life that was filmed. It was purely an experimental film showcasing how this instrument was upgraded and how it was played. Once upgraded, then I can go through the process of electronically developing these instruments to reach the positions I would want to reach. That was one of the main purposes of creating Ethio-Jazz: for all indigenous Ethiopian instruments to play American Jazz and be part of that rich musical history.

EM: How did you go about composing the Ethiopian Electronic Opera? What was the purpose of undertaking such an extensive creative project?

I have composed an electronic opera based on Ethiopian Coptic church music that originated in 360 AD. So it has been quite a challenge to back up that musical form with European musical instruments. The opera was recently performed on April 14th, 2008 at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre. So we have a stick called meqamïa that we used to conduct musicians in the 680 AD when there was no known symphony orchestra in the world. You know there is the person in front waving the baton in the military band and of course eighty- to ninety percent of that band’s movement is traced back to the baton, [akin to] the way the symphony is synchronized with the movement of the conductor’s stick. The whole idea is to have my opera conducted by the movement of the mekamia [and open up a very complex discourse on the modernization of music]. Now whether this European tradition has been inspired by the conducting system already in place in Ethiopia or if it was created elsewhere is yet to be determined. So part of my research has been in been looking at the oldest forms of music and trying to understand the [transnational] path that led to the early development of the arts. Also there is the musical instrument called the Käbäro, which has a very similar function to the drums in jazz music, but probably more likened to the timpani. Great composers like Bach or Tzaichovsky used timapanis as part of the composition, not for rhythm; the Käbäro had a similar [characteristically European function]. I had the time of my life as more of a musicologist in the field of Ethiopian music…my culture is so amazingly beautiful and dynamic.

EM: Can we talk more about the indigenous people who created this purely ‘modern’ music that actually predates the European classical movement?

When I ran the television show, we documented a segment on the ethnic group in Derashe, which is actually a very beautiful story about an interesting tribe in Ethiopia. I went down to South Ethiopia and these people have an advanced musical history and are actually playing their indigenous music in the diminished scales. And I was amazed because when I studied music at Berklee, they taught how Charlie Parker popularized this scale and modernized jazz and how great European composers in the past like Debussy and Bach utilized these scales. Yet these indigenous people were playing these scales well in advance and I’m like, ‘where did all this come from? I mean, these people have been there for ages and ages!’ Ethiopia is usually based on five-tone scales and so how is this minority group is able to hear a twelve-tone scale, while all of Ethiopia’s mainstream enjoyed only five-tone music? How did they manage to create this? This was the film that I had even showed during my Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard and fusing this music with guitar, bass, synthesizers, congas, timbales and we played these beautifully fused music just to show [the inherent connection in our distant musical histories]. Then it asks the question, what came before what? So I am trying to expose the Ethiopian contribution to the development of modern art.

EM: What was their role in society and what makes them so unique to Ethiopian culture?

When you go down into most of the rural area you see these genius people, who I call “scientists in sound,” however, most people would call them simply farmers. The Ethiopians would visit them during family holidays to hear them play as entertainment. However, in reality there are musical forms that these indigenous people create that makes the world move in different directions and results in unexpected collisions. I felt bad and thought that these people should be highly honored, just how creative people like musical composers and scientists are treated in more developed nations. So I want to consider these people and give them the respect they deserve for bringing music to this world. To fully document their process, how they cut the bamboo and cloth to fashion the karar, how they kill the cow and use the skin to form the käbäro, and how they cut holes into the bamboo to create this 5-tone scale system in the washint. These people are truly creative people. They shouldn’t be hiding in the background or [dismissed] as merely poor farmers tending livestock. I considered them truly “scientists” and people should respect them for their early contributions to the modern arts.

EM: What compelled you to take this role of community builder in the town of Addis Ababa so seriously?

Well, there are in this world many different types of musicians. One involved in creating new styles of music, one involved in composing and one in developing instruments. I see my role in a different way and chose [to take on the task] of a musicologist. Now that I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in these great, developed countries, I now want these [indigenous] people to join this [increasingly globalized] world, not to be forgotten relics of the past.

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Mulatu’s astounding life’s work provides a comprehensive tableau on the development of humanity, and not just from the Eurocentric view that modernization in thought and music existed first in Europe. The profound effect that Ethiopian culture had on modern music in the early history of the world serves as one of many links that ultimately binds all cultures into one whole. There was never a dark Africa trapped in all its primitivism, desperately seeking Western culture to guide it to cultural salvation: and Mulatu challenges us to consider a different perspective of Africa, one that recognizes that, essentially, all human cultures are merely part of a vast continuum of music that transcends the linear narrative of human development and perhaps, goes beyond the imaginary lines that separate one nation from the next.

Mulatu’s quest to create and popularize Ethio-Jazz, grew into a lifelong mission of musicology. He wanted to reveal the intrinsically modern attributes that existed in the neighborhood of ‘swinging Addis’ to the world and dispel the negative stereotypes of Ethiopia deeply entrenched in the American and European psyches. Far more than being the creator of Ethio-Jazz, he rightfully became its ambassador.