MULATU ASTATKE'S ETHIOPIAN GROOVES

After Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers” went into wide release in 2005, the soundtrack seemed to generate as much buzz as the film.

This was hardly surprising, given Jarmusch's distinctive music tastes for his indie films; consider John Lurie’s “fake jazz” in “Down By Law”, and RZA’s hip-hop work on the subdued “Ghost Dog”. In turn, “Broken Flowers” featured the Ethiopian jazz of Mulatu Astatke, which complimented the deadpan, melancholy feel of the film.

At a recent London performance, Astatke repeatedly referenced Jarmusch’s film, perhaps because that soundtrack was what led the fairly young audience to his music. But his richly textured and trippy jazz pieces stood on their own just fine, especially when backed by the Heliocentrics, a British collective of musicians that credits Sun Ra and James Brown as their main influences. (They’ve also backed DJ Shadow, and their drummer has been sampled by Madlib.)

In short, Astatke is a big fish in the Ethiopian jazz pond. He studied music in England and is reportedly the first African student to attend the Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts. He’s credited with combining Ethiopian melodies with Western funk and jazz to create what often gets called “hypnotic grooves”, most notably on the Ethiopiques album series (which came out in the 1990s to spotlight Ethiopian music from the 1960s and '70s). He was also a guest artist with the Duke Ellington orchestra when they played Ethiopia in the '70s.

At his recent performance at Koko in Camden, Astatke, now in his late 60s, took the helm at the vibraphone, surrounded on all sides by the younger members of the Heliocentrics on horns, cello, percussion, drums, guitar, keys and bass. Cutting through lush textures of organ, guitar and bass, Astatke hunched over the vibes and went to work. What I assume was some sort of technical issue made it tricky to hear some of the extreme highs and lows, but his solos were spot-on, and the band wasn’t afraid to play with high intensity, attitude and sass.

The result was Ethiopian jazz performed with dense layers of droning sounds that rarely let up. Astatke's music tends to ooze with dark minor or modal chord progressions, but set against a hip-hop drum-beat it sounded hip, sexy and infectious. Horn solos from saxophone and trumpet propelled songs into open-ended jazz-jam territory. The result was an irrepressible blend of old and new, culled from a variety of influences, which had the largely 20- and 30-something crowd dancing and cheering.

A new recording of Astatke with the Heliocentrics is out now.

~ GARY MOSKOWITZ