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 ...

Ethiopian percussionist Mulatu Astatke — widely recognized as the father of Ethio-Jazz — wants the sub-genre he helped kickstart nearly 60 years ago to have a more prominent role on the world stage.

Mulatu Astatke experienced his musical conversion as a teenager while supposedly studying engineering abroad, mastering piano, vibraphone and Latin percussion in London, Boston and New York. After he ...

Samuel Yirga is a pianist from Ethiopia. A 20-something prodigy, Yirga is too young to have experienced the Ethio-jazz movement of the early 1970s, but he has absorbed its music deeply — and plenty ...

During the second half of the 20th century, cosmopolitan Ethiopians were delighted to see jazz giant Duke Ellington receive their country’s Medal of Honor from Emperor Haile Selassie. At the same time ...

Today, Oakland musician Meklit‘s third album, When The People Move The Music Moves Too, comes out, featuring an upbeat, swirling mix of soul, pop, and Ethiopian jazz. Produced by multiple Grammy Award ...

Complex rhythms and relentless grooves are what set music from the so-called golden era of Ethiopian jazz apart, and it's that essential and even hypnotic energy that guitarist and composer Jay Danley ...

TO WESTERN EARS, the music seems both foreign and familiar. Its mood stretches from sultry and haunting to upbeat and vibrant. Soulful Western undertones are audible, yet the overall impression is ...