Early life Mulatu Astatke is of Christian
Amhara descent. Mulatu's family sent the young Mulatu to learn engineering in Wales during the late 1950s. Instead, he began his education at
Lindisfarne College near
Wrexham before earning a degree in music through studies at the
Trinity College of Music in London. He collaborated with jazz vocalist and percussionist
Frank Holder. In the 1960s, Mulatu moved to the United States to enroll at
Berklee College of Music in Boston. He studied vibraphone and percussion. While living in the U.S., Mulatu became interested in
Latin jazz and recorded his first two albums,
Afro-Latin Soul, Volumes 1 & 2, in New York City in 1966. The records prominently feature Mulatu's vibraphone, backed by piano and
congas playing Latin rhythms, and were entirely instrumental with the exception of the song "I Faram Gami I Faram," which was sung in Spanish. In the early 1970s, Mulatu brought his new sound, which he called
Ethio-jazz, back to his homeland while continuing to work in the U.S. He collaborated with many notable artists in both countries, arranging and playing on recordings by
Mahmoud Ahmed, and appearing as a special guest with
Duke Ellington and his band during a tour of Ethiopia in 1973. Mulatu recorded
Mulatu of Ethiopia (1972) in New York City, but most of his music was released by Amha Eshete's label
Amha Records in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, including several singles, his album
Yekatit Ethio Jazz (1974), and six out of the ten tracks on the compilation album
Ethiopian Modern Instrumentals Hits.
Yekatit Ethio Jazz combined traditional Ethiopian music with American jazz, funk, and soul. By 1975, Amha Records had ceased production after the
Derg military junta forced the label's owner to flee the country. Mulatu remained to play vibes for
Hailu Mergia and the
Walias Band's 1977 album
Tche Belew (which included "Musicawi Silt") before the Walias also left Ethiopia to tour internationally. Mulatu's music has had an influence on other musicians from the Horn region, such as
K'naan. His Western audience increased when the film
Broken Flowers (2005) directed by
Jim Jarmusch featured seven of his songs, including one performed by Cambodian-American rock band
Dengue Fever. National Public Radio used his instrumentals as beds under or between pieces, notably on the program
This American Life. Samples of his were used by
Nas,
Damian Marley,
Kanye West,
Cut Chemist,
Quantic,
Madlib, and
Oddisee. After meeting the Massachusetts-based
Either/Orchestra in Addis Ababa in 2004, Mulatu began a collaboration with the band beginning with performances in Scandinavia in summer 2006 and London, New York, Germany, Holland, Glastonbury (UK), Dublin, and Toronto in 2008. In the fall of 2008, he collaborated with the London-based collective
The Heliocentrics on the album
Inspiration Information Vol. 3, which included re-workings of his Ethio-jazz classics with new material by the Heliocentrics and himself. In 2008, he completed a
Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University, where he worked on modernization of traditional Ethiopian instruments and premiered a portion of a new opera,
The Yared Opera. He served as an Abramowitz Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, giving lectures and workshops and advising
MIT Media Lab on creating a modern version of the
krar, a traditional Ethiopian instrument. On 1 February 2009, Mulatu performed at the Luckman Auditorium in Los Angeles with a band that included
Bennie Maupin,
Azar Lawrence, and
Phil Ranelin. He released a two-disc compilation album to be sold exclusively to passengers of Ethiopian Airlines, with the first disc containing a compilation of styles from different regions of Ethiopia and the second consisting of studio originals. On 12 May 2012, he received an honorary doctorate of music from the
Berklee College of Music. In 2015, Mulatu began recording with
Black Jesus Experience for
Cradle of Humanity, which premiered at the
Melbourne Jazz Festival in 2016 and was followed by a tour of Australia and New Zealand. Although not featured on the original soundtrack recording, his performance of his composition "Tezeta" is featured over the closing credits in the 2024 film
Nickel Boys. As of 2025, Mulatu is still making tours all over Europe, including Poland, Rome and Vienna. Author
Kevin Kwan cited him as one of the major inspirations for his writing. ==Discography==