In the late 1960s and early 70s, Mulatu Astatke was one of the driving forces behind the transformation of the Ethiopian music scene from one of state-sanctioned bands to independent groups that played at nightspots around Addis Ababa. As an arranger, he devised backing tracks for many of the country's popular singers, and as a solo artist he forged an unorthodox path of his own, developing a unique Ethio jazz style. It had at its core fundamental Ethiopian musical concepts, the pentatonic scale first and foremost. But Astatke, the only vibraphonist on the Addis scene, mixed these sounds with the jazz, Latin music, and psychedelia he'd picked up during his time at music schools in the U.S. and Britain to make something new.
As important as he was to Ethiopian pop's golden era, Astatke's solo recordings were never commercial successes, and they remained little-heard outside his home country until Buda Musique's Ethiopiques series devoted its fourth volume to him in 1998. The cover showed him with Duke Ellington during the latter's 1973 visit to Addis, which was apt-- his own music had an Ellingtonian richness and sense of texture. Since that release, interest in his music has steadily grown. In the last few years, Astake got himself back in the game, heading to Harvard University on a Radcliffe Institute fellowship, where he worked on an opera and a modernization of the krar, a traditional Ethiopian stringed instrument. Last year, he cut an album and toured with London's Heliocentrics, and on Mulatu Steps Ahead, he works with them again, as well as Boston's Either/Orchestra, to take his music to a few places it's never been before.
For one thing, much of Astatke's past music, especially his classic stuff, was much more structured and stately than what he does here. It's as though he's come out of his Ellington period and he's moving into a looser, more improvisational realm. The band eases into the album with ambient opener "Radcliffe", guys in a room gathering steam together, and the sound coalesces on "Green Africa". By the time they get into "The Way to Nice", they're hammering out a swinging groove.
The way the saxes wind through pentatonic themes in unison on "Mulatu's Mood" recalls classic Astatke, and they give a solo to the bass sax and another to a kora, a West African harp that Mulatu drags across the continent and seamlessly inserts into his own music. He reaches way back into his own catalog on "I Faram Gami I Faram", a tune he originally wrote and recorded in New York in 1966. The combination of Ethio jazz texture, Latin rhythm, melismatic Ethiopian lead singing and salsa backing vocals is amazingly natural, and it's a much more distinctive version than the original, which features a more typical boogaloo vocal.
It's great to hear Mulatu himself stretching out, soloing on "Ethio Blues" and creatively filling out the chords elsewhere. Anyone who's liked his music in the past is very likely to enjoy this, but I think Mulatu Steps Ahead will broaden Astatke's jazz following as well, and frankly, it's a much more coherent record than a lot of heavily improvisational modern jazz albums. It's a very easy album to access for listeners who aren't particularly schooled in either jazz or the Ethiopiques series as well, moving an old, appealing sound forward and outward. It's a pleasure to hear a man of Mulatu's age and past accomplishments push himself artistically like this, and it will be interesting to see where his music goes next.
