The tour by the 81-year-old Mulatu Astatke which is currently under way and this album seem to be giving off different messages. Coming to London on 16 and 17 November, it is being marketed as a farewell. Last night's show at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels had lured a full house through being billed as “his very last concert on Belgian soil". Paris’s Salle Pleyel mentions “une grande tournée d’adieu”.
And yet the video trailer for Mulatu Plays Mulatu, his first major statement since Sketches of Ethiopia from 2013, asserts directly, and this fine album absolutely confirms the point: “He’s not done yet.”
This is definitely a moment for reflection. Mulatu Astatke is quoted as saying that the album is “the culmination of my work bringing this music to the world”. The composer/arranger/vibraphone and conga player didn’t just invent the art form of Ethio-jazz in the early 1970s, he has been living it, defining it, keeping it in motion and on the road for decades... and clearly enjoying it too. And the quality here makes one wonder how definitive his decision to stop really is. As he wrote on Instagram last year, the morning after appearing in California: “There are moments to live for. Yesterday was one of them, taking the stage at the historical Hollywood Bowl with my amazing musicians bringing the science of Ethio-Jazz and to feel the love was priceless... Peace, Love and Ethio-Jazz.”
The Mulatu Astatke sound is and remains unmistakable. A few notes, a percussive slap, a moment of pentatonic keening, and it really couldn’t be anyone else. A cursory look through the tunes reveals that plenty of the cornerstones of the Mulatu Astatke canon are there. Seeing a re-appearance of “Yekermo Sew” on the track list might prompt a sceptical question as to what new direction could possibly be found for it, what there is to be said about it that is different. But that’s where the sceptic would be wrong.
Yes, the remarkable thing is that the Ethiopian’s London players such as music director/saxophonist James Arben and trumpeter Byron Wallen, who have toured the repertoire extensively, have succeeded. The new recording of “Yekermo Sew” feels not just edgier and more mysterious, it is more acoustically transparent than any other version. And it is followed by a version of “Azmari” which goes in a different direction, exudes a palpable sense of adults-in-the-room, a confident expression of the idiom.
Los Angeles-based album producer, musician and ethnomusicologist Dexter Story, who clearly worships Mulatu Astatke’s music and knows it thoroughly, has had a major role in making it happen. He says that the trick was “to keep the tape rolling continuously, attentive not only to the music but to the subtleties of Astatke’s verbal and non-verbal communication.” After that, the Addis sessions layered in contributions from musicians playing traditional instruments: the begena, masenqo, krar, kebero, and the washint.
Together, producer Story and his team, and the musicians in both locations, have succeeded in doing something remarkable. It still leaves the question of what’s next, given the evidence that Mulatu Ustatke clearly continues to have so much music left in him. Will he imitate Milton Nascimento, who stopped touring at 79 while continuing to make music in one place. Or Brahms, who told his publisher Simrock he had put his house in order thrown all the music he didn’t want into the river Traun… but then went on in a different direction and had the late flowering of Op. 114 onwards. Time will tell.
Mulatu Plays Mulatu contains so much life and joy... surely this isn't the last word and there will be more to come.
