Godfather of Ethiopian jazz Mulatu Astatke returns to Berkeley's UC Theatre
Hailed as one of the most influential jazz musician to emerge from the African continent, Ethiopian keyboard player and percussionist Mulatu Astatke returns to the UC Theatre in Berkeley, playing two concerts starting Wednesday..
Astatke's career in music began when he was sent by his family to study engineering in Wales during the late 1950s when he was a teen. Instead, he ended up attending Trinity College of Music in London.
He also got his first professional performance experience in the UK, playing with Guyanese singer and percussionist Jack Holder. In the 1960s, Astatke would move to the United States, becoming the first African student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he developed an interest in Latin Jazz.
Switching ably from piano to vibraphone to drums, Astatke made his recording debut as a bandleader with Afro Latin Soul on Worthy Records in 1966. The album recorded in Brooklyn became a hit with it's sinuous grooves and mix of Latin and African rhythms and led to a second volume released that same year.
The following decade, Astatke returned to his native country with what he termed "Ethio jazz" while still traveling to the States regularly to record. His later albums Mulatu of Ethiopia and Yekatit Ethio Jazz would incorporate elements of funk and ululating Ethiopian vocals that combined to create Astatke's uniquely transporting sound. While the musician would continue to perform and record in Ethiopia, he would remain an underground sensation among DJs and record collectors who started trading his rare early singles for sizable sums of money. Hip hop producers also began mining his hypnotic grooves for samples.
A series of Ethiopian music compilations issued by the French label Buda Musique would focus on Astatke for its fourth volume Éthiopiques 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale 1969-1974 that was released in 1998, leading to a renewed interest in his music. Since then, Astatke's classic songs have been used extensively in films (most notably Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers) and commercials.
The revival has also led to new recordings including collaborations with London group Heliocentrics (on the acclaimed 2009 effort Inspiration Information) and Boston's Either/Orchestra, which was followed by Steps Ahead, his first new collection of new music under his own name in a quarter century. In the summer of 2017, Astatke came to the U.S. to perform as one of the more unusual guests at the otherwise metal-focused Psycho Las Vegas festival and SummerStage in New York City's Central Park in addition to playing a handful of rapturously received headlining dates including a sold-out night at the UC Theatre. That same year, Strut Records put out an expansive deluxe three-record version of Mulatu of Ethiopia, that included a separate mono mix and session outtakes.
More recently, he has recorded two albums with Australian Ethio-jazz group Black Jesus Experience, including their latest release To Know Without Knowing which came out in 2020. Astatke had a planned U.S. tour postponed twice due to COVID before he and his band were finally return to the Bay Area early that year for two nights at the UC.
For this return engagement, Astatke visits Berkeley on a tour co-presented by KALW Music and Jazz Is Dead, the record label and concert promotion organization founded by noted hip-hop and soul producers Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge. Jazz Is Dead has worked extensively with the UC Theatre, presenting shows by Brazilian legends Arthur Verocai, Hermeto Pascoal and Milton Nascimento at the venue. For these two shows at the UC Theatre starting Wednesday, he is joined by DJ Juan G with opening sets by local Ethiopian-jazz disciples Meklit (on Wednesday) and Sun Hop Fat (on Thursday).
Mulatu Astatke
Wednesday-Thursday, June 12-13, 7 p.m. $42.50-$67.50
UC Theatre