Mulatu Astatke (1943) is a unique figure within the Ethiopian music. The pianist left the 17-year-old student from London (and later New York) and came into the city into contact with jazz, pop and Caribbean music. In the seventies he returned to Ethiopia where he was one of the main players in what later was "Swinging Addis" was called. The Ethiopian capital was bustling with music and the swinging
… 'Ethio-jazz "of Astatke was the soundtrack. Outside Ethiopia Astatke was barely known. That changed when his music was re-released in 1998 on a French label. One of his songs appeared in the film Broken Flowers (2005). Astatke then toured several times the world over which the pianist also donned Netherlands, and recorded an album with the young American group The Heliocentrics.more
