Ethio-jazz is one of the most distinctive sounds in the whole of recorded music, and for decades almost nobody outside Ethiopia had heard it. This is a guide to the essential albums.
The music comes from a specific and short-lived moment. Between roughly 1969 and 1974 — a period usually called Swinging Addis — Addis Ababa had nightclubs, a recording industry and a generation of musicians blending American soul and jazz with Ethiopian musical tradition.
That tradition is what makes it sound unlike anything else. Ethiopian music uses a set of pentatonic modes known as qenet, with names including tizita, bati, ambassel and anchihoye. Put a horn section and a jazz rhythm section behind those scales and the result is immediately identifiable: melancholy, slightly unresolved, and completely its own thing.
In 1974 the Derg took power, the nightclubs closed, and most of the musicians scattered or stopped.
Start Here: Top 5 Ethio-Jazz Albums
Mulatu of Ethiopia — Mulatu Astatke (the foundational record)
Éthiopiques Vol. 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale — (the compilation that reopened it all)
Erè Mèla Mèla — Mahmoud Ahmed (the great vocal album)
Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument — Hailu Mergia (solo, strange and beautiful)
Inspiration Information 3 — Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics (the modern meeting)
1. Mulatu Astatke — Mulatu of Ethiopia (1972)
Mulatu of Ethiopia is the album that defines the style, made by the musician who named it.
Astatke was sent to Wales to study engineering and switched to music, later studying at Trinity College London and then at Berklee, where he is generally described as the first African student.
He came back with vibraphone, congas and a working knowledge of Latin jazz, and applied all of it to Ethiopian modes. This record is the clearest statement of the result.
2. Various Artists — Éthiopiques Vol. 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale 1969–1974
The Éthiopiques series is the reason any of this music is available, and volume four is where most listeners start.
The French producer Francis Falceto began the series with Buda Musique in 1997, tracking down masters and licensing material that had been out of circulation for decades.
The series now runs to dozens of volumes. Volume four collects Astatke’s instrumental work and is the single most useful purchase in the whole catalogue.
3. Mahmoud Ahmed — Erè Mèla Mèla (1975)
Erè Mèla Mèla is the great Ethiopian vocal album, and the record that first broke the music to European listeners in the 1980s.
Ahmed had worked as a handyman at the Arizona Club in Addis before being allowed to sing with the house band, which was the Imperial Bodyguard Band.
The album was reissued in Europe in 1986 and became an unlikely cult record, years before the Éthiopiques series existed.
4. Hailu Mergia — Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument (1985)
Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument is a solo album of accordion, Rhodes and drum machine, recorded largely for Mergia’s own satisfaction.
Mergia had led the Walias Band in Addis, emigrated to the United States, and was driving a taxi in Washington, DC when the label Awesome Tapes From Africa tracked him down and reissued this cassette in 2013.
He has since recorded and toured again. The album is hypnotic, homemade and completely singular.
5. Getatchew Mekurya — Negus of Ethiopian Sax
Getatchew Mekurya played the tenor saxophone as a direct translation of a vocal tradition, and the result sounds startlingly like free jazz without being it.
He adapted shellela, a form of unaccompanied warrior’s chant, to the saxophone. Listeners who came to him through Albert Ayler comparisons were hearing a convergence rather than an influence.
Late in life he recorded with the Dutch punk band The Ex, which worked far better than it sounds.
6. Alèmayèhu Eshèté — Éthiopiques Vol. 9
Alèmayèhu Eshèté was known as the Ethiopian Elvis, and the comparison undersells him.
A soul singer with an enormous voice, working with the same small pool of backing bands as everyone else in Addis at the time.
The Éthiopiques volume devoted to him is the most efficient way in.
7. Girma Bèyènè — Éthiopiques Vol. 30 / Girma Bèyènè & Akalé Wubé (2017)
Girma Bèyènè was a pianist, arranger and singer who largely stopped performing for decades and then returned.
His arranging work sits underneath a great deal of the classic material, which makes him one of the crucial background figures of the era.
The 2017 album with the French band Akalé Wubé is a genuine late-career record rather than a nostalgia exercise.
8. The Walias Band — Tche Belew (1977)
Tche Belew is the essential band album from the period, and it includes “Musicawi Silt”, probably the single best-known Ethio-jazz instrumental.
The Walias were the house band at the Hilton in Addis and recorded with Mulatu Astatke on this record.
It was made after the Derg took power, which makes its existence slightly improbable.
9. Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics — Inspiration Information 3 (2009)
Inspiration Information 3 is where Astatke meets a contemporary London band, and it works better than any comparable pairing.
The Heliocentrics are a psychedelic funk group who had already worked with DJ Shadow. The record is not a revival, it is new material, and it launched Astatke’s late international career.
10. Éthiopiques Vol. 21: Piano Solo — Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou is not a jazz musician at all, and her piano recordings are the most quietly astonishing thing in the whole series.
A nun who lived in Jerusalem, trained in European classical music, writing pieces that sit somewhere between Satie, Ethiopian liturgy and nothing else.
She died in 2023, aged 99, having gained a substantial international following in her final decade.
11. Éthiopiques Vol. 13: The Ethiopian Groove
The groove-focused volumes are where the connection to funk and soul is most obvious.
Useful for hearing how directly James Brown records reached Addis, and what local bands did with them.
12. Broken Flowers (2005) — soundtrack
Jim Jarmusch’s film put Mulatu Astatke’s music in front of a mass Western audience for the first time.
Not an album to study, but the reason a great many people discovered the music, and worth knowing as the pivot point in its reception.
Where to go next
The Éthiopiques series is the map. Work through the volumes rather than hunting individual albums, since most of the original LPs are rare and expensive, and the sequencing does a lot of the curatorial work for you.
Beyond that, Awesome Tapes From Africa has reissued several Ethiopian artists including Mergia, and the current generation — Akalé Wubé, Badume’s Band, Arat Kilo — are keeping the repertoire in circulation live.
Where did you first hear Ethio-jazz? Let us know in the comments below.
More guides to albums, musicians and jazz history in the Jazzfuel archive — or sign up for the Weekend Edition newsletter for a jazz reading list every Saturday.
