Sketches Of Ethiopia.

The immortal Mulatu Astatke has a new album out on the label Jazz Village, and it's simply called "Sketches Of Ethiopia". Enjoying a well-deserved fame since Jim Jarmusch's movie "Broken Flowers", Mulatu tours all over the world almost restlessly (okay, mainly North America and Europe). When he doesn't, he plays in his newly opened club in Addis Abeba.

Obviously sampling a title from Miles Davis' discography for this new album, Mulatu casted a variety of musicians to accompany him. If you follow the evolution of ethio-jazz, you may know that a big part of this scene is made of Western musicians nowadays. Following this trend, Mulatu hired a lot of Westerners for this album, mainly from London.

One thing I want to complain about this album is the very limited distribution I witnessed while I wanted to purchase it recently. You might want to hit the internet to get it easily. Oh well, maybe I should have checked directly at the nearest Harmonia Mundi (which is the official distribution company) store...

About the great musician that is Mulatu Astatke, chech this good article by Dylan Valley and also this very cool interview of the maestro by The Stimuleye.