The multi-instrumentalist faced resistance when he premiered his sound in the 60s but audiences have fallen in love with it since. Now aged 82, he’s still finding new directions – and wants recognition for Africa’s indigenous artists
“Do you know the Metro club?” I feign recognition to the 82-year-old father of Ethio-jazz, Mulatu Astatke, who knows the UK capital’s vanished haunts better than I do (the Soho venue closed down decades ago). By then, he had immersed himself in the city’s 60s jazz scene, befriending Ronnie Scott and the saxophonist Joe Harriott, with whom he occasionally jammed across Soho’s clubs, as well as musicians from Africa and the Caribbean.
But when he returned to “Swinging Addis” years later with the new genre he’d innovated in England and the United States, the audience at one of his first performances weren’t so taken by his fusion of jazz riffs with the harp-like begena. “Stop,” Astatke was told. “No more!” He didn’t say a word. Instead, he bowed, said his thanks and walked off. “I said: ‘I’ll show you,’” recalls Astatke in his smoky voice. “‘One day, I’ll come back and show you.’”
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