After half a century, Mulatu makes it back to Scotland

IT'S BEEN a long road to something approaching popular discovery outside of his homeland for Ethiopian composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Mulatu Astatke, although this 68-year-old's reputation among academics and purist aficionados of world jazz has been high in the past four decades.

The inventor of the style of music known as Ethio-jazz, Astatke saw his classic 1970s recordings swept along by the underground fascination with Latin jazz and Afrobeat revivalism in the late 1990s, but it wasn't until his songs were used as the backbone of Jim Jarmusch's 2005 Bill Murray-starring mid-life crisis drama Broken Flowers that his music began to make a broad impact on Western audiences.

For those still struggling to connect a sound to the man, a quick search online for Ygell Tezeta's insistent, unmistakable horn-stab intro and lazy, keyboard-propelled swagger should instantly reveal which of his songs you know.

Or perhaps the mysterious, exotic swirl of Yekermo Sew, which brings the sound of the streets of Addis Ababa and Manhattan together, is more familiar. At this year's Glasgow International Jazz Festival, Astatke will make his first live appearance in Scotland, although it's not his first visit to the country.

"I've been there, I don't know, 55 years ago?" he ponders on the line from a hotel in London. "A long time ago now, I went there once for a vacation. I'm sure it's probably changed. I think it will be very nice to go back though, I think I'm going to enjoy it."

Those wondering what brought a teenager born in the western Ethiopian city of Jimma to Scotland for a holiday in the 1950s might also be interested to hear why he was living in north Wales at the time.

"My family wanted me to have the best of education," he says. "I wanted to be an engineer and at that time, a long time ago, education in Ethiopia was not as good as now, so I came over to North Wales to continue high school."

Did he find it a big culture shock? "No, no. Well, you know, not much. It was just a high school, and I went to a high school in Ethiopia as well. Not so much, because I was living really great in my home country, my father was well off, we never had any problems. The education was no great change. I really enjoyed (studying in Wales), because it gave me a beautiful background."

Once he started playing music Astatke revealed a prodigious talent for it, building a career through dedicated academic study. Starting out at Wales's Lindisfarne College, he progressed to London's Trinity College of Music and then Berklee College of Music in Boston.

"It was one of the most highly prestigious jazz institutions in the world," he says, "and in fact I was the first African to study music there." Despite the very nation-specific nature of the sound he created, Ethio-jazz was actually formed in the jazz clubs of New York following Astatke's time at Berklee.

How was the style developed? Was it an accidental fusion of the sounds of his upbringing competing with those of his surroundings? "No accident," he says firmly. "I've never done anything by accident. I always know what I'm doing, I do a lot of research before I do anything. It took me quite a long time to put (Ethio-jazz) together because it's not easy when you are combining different time signatures, it's like the mixing of chemicals until it's ideal. But my chemistry came out beautifully in the end."

Around 40 years ago Astatke moved back to Ethiopia, to Addis Ababa, although he would continue to record and perform abroad, perhaps most notably with 1972's cult, New York-recorded Mulatu of Ethiopia LP. He was also a special guest of Duke Ellington on his 1973 tour of Ethiopia.

"I felt I had to share my compositions, my experience, with my people," he says of his return. "It was strange, because I had a problem for about two years and then everyone seemed to like it. Not just Ethiopia, but now the Americans, the Chinese, the Germans, the British, everybody likes it. Which I think is a great compliment."

Although the late 70s cooling of Astatke's career came about partly due to the rise of the communist Derg junta in his homeland, he still maintained a profile by composing for television, theatre and radio, as well as some overseas teaching engagements (in recent years he's worked with establishments like Harvard and MIT).

It was Paris label Buda Musique's 1998 compilation Ethiopiques Vol 4 which finally reintroduced him to Western audiences, though, leading in recent years to collaborations with modern jazz outfits Either/Orchestra and Heliocentrics.

In a future which looks bright and busy, Astatke is also looking forward to completing a debut opera and a new album with his Steps Ahead band, with whom he'll be performing in Glasgow.

The self-styled "father of Ethio-jazz" (he says it with self-deprecating pride) sums up the reason for all this hard work with good cheer: "I'm enjoying myself."