Musique : Mulatu Astake

Vibraphonist and inventor of Ethio-Jazz, Mulatu Astatke crosses the decades with the same contagious ardour, distilling his inimitable style around the world.

A fusion of jazz, funk, Latin music and traditional Ethiopian music that is instantly recognisable, a bewitching blend of cultures and styles with a hypnotic groove.

Mulaku Astatke, born in Ethiopia in 1943, has a long and rich history of encounters and creations. He trained first at Trinity College of Music in London and then at the prestigious Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he was the first African student!

After the ‘golden age of the 1970s’ in Ethiopia, his popularity has continued to grow, crossing frontiers thanks to the Ethiopiques series of CDs released by Buda Musique, and even more so thanks to the inclusion of his musical flights of fancy in the soundtrack to the film Broken Flowers by American film-maker Jim Jarmusch.

It was a real artistic and media coup, and since then he's been filling theatres at every appearance, flanked by his brilliant musicians who are just as good on double bass as they are on traditional instruments.

His music is ‘elegant and enveloping, African and Western, hypnotic and evocative’, making him the undisputed pope of modern Ethiopian pop.

Friday 15 November 2024 at 8.30 pm.