The term ‘Ethio-Jazz’ refers to the genre of Ethiopian music (jazz) that first started appearing around the 1970’s with several Ethio-Jazz groups throughout Ethiopia. Mulatu Astatke, born in 1943, is known to have been the godfather of Ethio-Jazz itself. I did a recent post entitled “What is Afro beat?”, and interestingly enough, both Ethio-Jazz and the Afro beat style are similar in the sense that they are heavily influenced by a lot of American Jazz/Soul classics, but incorporate their own groove, flare, and cultural style to the music, making it even light years better than anything previously recorded, and for usually on less than half the budget than most of the previous big sellers of their day. What is interesting is the quality of these songs from Ethiopia are not at all produced like Motown records, but many times just recorded with one single microphone and a live band.
Most people would not have ever had the opportunity to hear this very lesser known and almost geographically exclusive form of music, but several songs from Mulatu Astatke as well as other Ethio-Jazz artists, where recently featured in the major motion picture entitled, Broken Flowers, starring Bill Murray. I found it funny that they felt the need, like most underground genres do, to promote the one mainstream connection to sell more of the music, as you will see in the picture above, they added “including three songs from the movie Broken Flowers”. This is for the ignorant Americans who can’t trust music outside of their top 40 chart, unless the music has been first “approved” by a familiar movie or television show.
But enough about that, there is a music series available entitled “Ethiopiques”, which is a compilation of hundreds of authentic Ethio-jazz musicians/bands from the era. I had read recently that they are still releasing music from the series, but I highly recommend checking out some of the first volumes available. My personal favorite Ethio-jazz song right now is from Ethiopiques Volume #1, which is an instrumental that is full of heavy sax lines, entitled Ewnet Yet Lagegnesh. Give it a listen!
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