Mulatu Astatke

As far as I know (please challenge me on this if I'm wrong) Mulatu Astatke remains the only significant Ethiopian jazz composer and bandleader to date. (2012 correction:  I am way wrong...way wrong...there are more).  Mulatu Astatke was born in Dijemma, Ethiopia in 1943. He was sent to London at 17 to study engineering but instead turned to music and studied clarinet, piano, and harmony at London's Trinity College of Music. In London and later New York, Mulatu was taken by latin jazz and returning to Ethiopia at the end of the sixties he brought that influence to bear in his home country. Mulatu introduced the vibraphone to Ethiopia and with this instrument and his formidable arranging skills he shaped his own very unique form of jazz that he dubbed "Ethio-Jazz"; despite widespread admiration, Mulatu is still the only source of this smokey, laid-back music. This album collects most of his recorded work and is replete with dark, snakelike horn-lines, evocative Rhodes and some seriously deep groove . This stuff is truly one of a kind.

Ethiopiques 4 - Mulatu Astatke