You’d expect a conversation with Mulatu Astatke to be about music. He is, after all, the father of a musical genre: Ethio-jazz. But when he talks about the art form, he tends to focus on its ...

It is bold indeed for any jazz artist to evoke Miles Davis' landmark album Sketches of Spain. But Mulatu Astatke, like Miles, is a true original. The music Astatke first imagined 40 years ago sounds ...

Admas draws from and rearranges “golden era” Ethiopian music with then-fairly-new synthesizer and drum-machine rhythms. Steve Kiviat Admas. From left, clockwise: Abegasu Shiota, Henock Temesgen, ...

Ethiopia enjoys a rich tradition of enticing music, filled with asymmetric rhythms set to a haunting, five-note scale and sly double-entendre lyrics in the Amharic language. It's a shame that, for ...

Ethiopian jazz master Mulatu Astatke took a break from his extensive 2018 European concert tour to play at the 19th Cape Town International Jazz Festival. This should come as no surprise given that he ...

In Hindu cosmology, the world is traditionally depicted as a dome resting on the backs of four strong elephants, who themselves stand on the shell of a giant tortoise. In the traditional music of the ...

On Nov. 9, around 200 people packed into the Signet Society for the second annual Ethio-Jazz Soiree, hosted and organized by Harvard’s Eritrean and Ethiopian Students Association (EESA). Enlivened ...

Every Friday from 2016 until recently in a small, second-floor room of the Crystal City restaurant Enjera, Ethiopian guitarist Selam Seyoum Woldemariam has led his trio through minor key, ...

Teddy Afro currently holds all top 10 positions on Ethiopia’s weekly YeneVibe music chart, with each track adding notable view counts. Songs like “Das Tal (Ansaw)” and “Shih Bibal (Back to 90s)” lead ...

When the band QWANQWA takes the stage of the BU Global Music Festival on Saturday, Sept. 17, it’ll be making its Boston debut — as are five of the other groups playing the free event. But if the ...