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Ethio jazz was born in Addis Ababa in the late 1960s when Mulatu Astatke combined Ethiopian pentatonic scales with jazz instrumentation. The Amha and Philips Ethiopia pressings from 1969–1978 are among the most sought-after world music records on Discogs. Jim Jarmusch used Mulatu Astatke's recordings on the Broken Flowers soundtrack, introducing them to a new generation of producers.
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Discover Ethio JazzEthio jazz is a genre created by Mulatu Astatke, who studied music in Wales, Boston, and New York before returning to Ethiopia in the late 1960s. He combined the pentatonic scales of Ethiopian traditional music with jazz harmony and instrumentation — vibraphone, Wurlitzer electric piano, conga — creating a sound that is immediately distinctive. The recordings were made in Addis Ababa in the early 1970s, pressed in small quantities, and largely unknown outside Ethiopia until the Éthiopiques compilation series brought them to international attention in the 1990s.
Original Amha label pressings of Mulatu Astatke's early 1970s recordings are the most valuable. The Philips Ethiopia catalog is also highly collected. The Éthiopiques series (Buda Musique) reissued much of this material in the 1990s–2000s and made it widely available — these reissues are affordable and the recordings are excellent. Original Amha pressings are rare and expensive.
Ethio jazz is sampled for its distinctive pentatonic melodic content — the scale structure creates a mood that is different from Western jazz. The vibraphone recordings have a specific attack and sustain that works as a melodic layer under contemporary beats. The rhythm sections are tight and groove-oriented. Flying Lotus, Madlib, and producers in the contemporary jazz-adjacent hip hop scene have all referenced Ethio jazz.