Mulatu Astatke studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston — the first African student admitted. He brought jazz harmony, Latin percussion, and Western arrangements back to Addis Ababa and fused them with Ethiopian pentatonic scales and traditional rhythms to create Ethio-jazz. Mulatu of Ethiopia, recorded in New York in 1972, is the pivotal album where that fusion fully crystallised. The title track opens the record with Mulatu’s signature vibraphone weaving across congas and organ, mapping out a sound that belonged to no single continent.
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