Mulatu Astatke’s genre bending 1972 album Mulatu of Ethiopia on Worthy Records sees a worthy repress on the Strut label.
Mulatu Astatke comes to us from Ethiopia via the UK, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Music, after which he went to Berklee School of Music in Boston studying percussion and jazz. During his studies, Mulatu would regularly travel to New York and frequent jazz clubs in the big apple from the Cheetah, a famous Puerto-Rican and Dominican Latin-jazz club on Broadway, The Palladium and the Village Gate, immersing himself in the vanguard sounds of the day. He developed a strong penchant for Latin music as his first album Afro-Latin Soul demonstrates, flitting between Afro-inspired bossa rubs and head rolling, percussive son, salsa and boogaloo, almost like a lo-fi version of Bobby Montez (Kon Tiki).
Mulatu led his group on vibraphone and congas—instruments that he would later introduce to Ethiopian popular music—while the rest of the album features an uncredited cast of musicians. According to Astatke, he had to get the musicians together and rehearse a good 3-4 weeks with them before the recording so that they could wrap their heads around the rhythms and unique groove that he was trying to channel.
The set opens with Mulatu, a deeply funky and groovy number propped up with deep surging African percussive patterns while channeling some Latin rhythmical influences. Wah Wah electric keys squelch and squabble imbibing an outer-worldy funkiness, while horns blow with a tonality that conjures images of a Bedouin caravan weaving its way through Saharan sands. It is almost as if George Clinton has invited a snake charmer on board the mothership, this track the direct consequence of their interaction. Mascarum continues in similar stead, equally funky and cosmic with Mulatu’s mystical vibraphone playing taking centre stage, snaking between the pentatonic minor and traditional Ethiopian five tone scale. Kulunmanqueleshi takes folkloric Ethiopian sounds and mixes them with Afro-American soul and jazz: the resulting music is an eastern tinged yet funky by-product. Munaye is the most overtly soul-jazz reaching number, supplied with grand horns and funky drum patterns, a recording that wouldn’t sound out of place on the Mainstream label with similar clav to the likes of Darwins Theory (for those who know). The psychedelic Latin swing of Chifara rounds off the album nicely, a cross-pollination of Afro-Cuban and North African sounds that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Moroccan souk or bazaar, nor in downtown Havana.
Buy the LP HERE
Check out the tracks HERE
