You’d expect a conversation with Mulatu Astatke to be about music. He is, after all, the father of a musical genre: Ethio-jazz. But when he talks about the art form, he tends to focus on its ...

ONSTAGE 68-year-old Mulatu Astatke is as subtle and understated as the Ethiopian jazz he created. The music, a hybrid of traditional Ethiopian music and jazz, is subdued, somewhat melancholy, and at ...

When most folks think of Ethiopian music they hear the slithering soul-funk sounds created by artists like Mahmoud Ahmed or Tilahun Gessesse—killer singers who delivered Amharic-language jams with ...