The Beirut Groove Collective

The Beirut Groove Collective meets the godfather of Ethio jazz, Mulatu Astatke, in a basement café a few hours before his second concert in Istanbul’s legendary Babylon club. Astatke knows how to build suspense, dressed in sleek leather with that characteristic toothy grin, the man talks like a snake. His voice drops to a whisper, punctuated with belly laughs as he shares the beginnings of Ethio jazz with the BGC.

You must be something of a national treasure in Ethiopia now?

I’m trying to get the Ethiopians to really – instead of jumping around – to learn to see and appreciate music and a jazz concert, where they come, see, shake to the music. This is the kind of thing I really want an Ethiopian audience to learn.

There was a big comeback to Ethiopian jazz in the 90s and a rediscovery of your music with your soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Broken Flowers’, the re-release of your records through Buda musique and your shows and recordings with the Heliocentrics, but Ethio jazz is still quite a misunderstood term. Can you define it for us?

Ethiopian music is based on five notes. I remember well after I left Berklee [Boston’s Berklee College of Music] I formed a group called the Ethiopian quintet. That’s where Ethio jazz started. I started to combine the influence of jazz and traditional Ethiopian music, to combine five tones with twelve tone scales. The Ethiopian element, this culture of rules is so precise. I had to come out of my own cognitions, come up with different bass lines and compositions. There’s a Latin element also. I wanted to include Latin because for me it has so much in common with African music, especially the rhythms. Those are the roots of Ethio jazz.

Ethio jazz, was actually created when I was in the United States. I went back home because I wanted to actually show to the public, to Ethiopian music, what I’d been doing while I was away. I had a hard time introducing people to jazz fusion and all the different forms. I had a program called ‘African Jazz Village’ on the radio for seven years. I was teaching jazz, talking about all these things. After I went home I did some recording, just for the people, so they can understand. No singing [voice drops to a whisper] just jazz [laughs]. Now a lot of music has come to this range of people. Ethio jazz is played all over the world. More and more people have started to come to my concerts.

Do you think Ethio jazz has had much of an influence in exposing traditional Ethiopian music and have you noticed Ethiopian music change as an influence of what you’ve done?

I guess yes, I think it does because there was a different type of music that appealed to the mass before. When I came in and changed the rhythm and the structures that brought a lot of change in Ethiopian modern music. The influence with my music means that Ethiopian music is now all over the world. Ethio jazz is like my baby. So it’s just big now [laughs]. It’sso big.

Is the jazz scene still developing in Ethiopia?

Oh yeah. Lots of Ethio jazz musicians are coming out. We are still not many, but now Ethio jazz musicians are developing. There are even European musicians playing it now. There are guys from Germany who are doing it.

How does it sound?

It’s cool man. This is how jazz is. It’s very personal. You cannot sound like anybody else. They might use some of your rules, but they’ll never sound like you. But I hear it. It’s good.

Are you working on any new releases?

I’m working on a new CD. It’s going to be a nice one. I’m doing it in London. It’s going to be very fusion, very interesting fusion. It will involve musicians from different parts [of the world]. It’s a different direction of Ethio jazz. We’re going to use lots of local musicians. We have Madagascan’s, Sudanese and Somalis. We’re going to sound crazy.

Bring it back to Africa!

Yeah man. I’m also doing my opera now.

You have lots of things on the table at the moment.

[Laughs] I’m going crazy I tell you.

I wanted to ask about the vibraphone because it’s an instrument that many people in jazz have used and made it their own from Lionel Hampton and Milt Jackson to Roy Ayers. It’s not an instrument that’s used so much these days. What is it that still appeals to you about it?

Well I always believe vibraphones are the voice of Africa. That’s where the early vibraphone was created. They were used in Senegal. Everything you can do on the piano you can do on the vibraphone.

I’ve found from my research into Ethiopian music. The Derashe tribespeople have used the diminishing scale for hundreds of years. The diminishing scale is very important for jazz. When we studied at Berklee they tell us how the diminishing scale is attributed to be-bop, to Charlie Parker. I was doing a research project into Ethiopian music with Harvard [University]. I went back to Berklee. I say “look there’s something I wanna discuss. Let’s go up to your office.” I said “Now my question is when I studied here we studied on Charlie Parker’s diminishing scales.” I said “How are you doing this? Is this down to Charlie Parker or is this from tribespeople.”

You’ve been doing some work on traditional Ethiopian instruments. How are you developing them?

I developed the krar. The krar only plays five tones, now I changed it to have eight strings. I’m developing them slowly to integrate them into modern music. I’m hoping to finish the krar, open it up and computerise it. All the Ethiopian youngsters now go to the guitar. Why? Because the krar limits them. It can play like the guitar but the shape and the sound is different. That’s what I’m trying to do from this bushman’s instrument, open it up and formulize it. When they play it it’s going to sound beautiful.

It’s a renaissance of Africa.

Yeah it’s a big project.

Back in the day, after the Derg military junta caused a number of Ethio jazz musicians and the label owner of Amha Records to flee the country, did you feel the effects on the creativity of Ethiopian music?

Well y’know for jazz it wasn’t a big problem. The problem they had was the lyrics, but for jazz musicians it was hard if they were there. I was part of the international jazz federation, Unesco, so I wasn’t actually entirely based in Ethiopia at the time. 

I had some problems with the people though. There was this play an Ethiopian poet wrote about a priest. He wrote the play and I was supposed to write the music for it. So I used the piano, jazz, bass. I wanted to play but the Ethiopians went so crazy thinking the music was blasphemous.

Same story with Ray Charles.

Really? This one woman was furious. She called me over and said “Look how can you play around with church music like this”. I just said “This is music. I like to think the way that I want to think and do what I want to do.” Now people go crazy. Look how they changed. Now they love it so much.

Yeah it can be a long battle for people to accept things.

It takes time. Keep on fighting. Never stop.

What else are you working on?

Now I’ve been working on this opera. It’s a very interesting story I was doing in Harvard. It’s based on the Ethiopian priest; you know how they walk around with a stick. You see the orthodox ceremony. It’s three hours. I’m going to have a priest coming from Ethiopia.

Now you’re performing at sold-out concerts around the world. Is it satisfying knowing you’ve made it and are finally getting recognition after all the difficulties?

When you’ve been struggling all your life and you get to this point you feel great. Last year I won best CD of the year, I got the BBC international award. Now they love the music.

September 2011