Ethiopian popular music from the 1960s and 1970s—with its blend of Ethiopian traditional music, jazz, and funk—has reached a mainstream Western audience largely through a series of ...

Makhadzi, the South African music sensation, embarks on a vibrant journey through Ethiopia, sharing her experiences and ...

Ethiopian culture developed more or less separately from surrounding cultures, with distinctive music to match. Though only a few volumes of the Éthiopiques series have focused on traditional ...

Marked by eerie and ancient-sounding tones, typical of traditional Ethiopian music, Ethiopian jazz or Ethio-jazz are a unique blend of traditional Ethiopian music with jazz, West African musical ...

In the 1970s, Mergia was part of an exciting musical scene in Addis Ababa that fused Western funk and soul with the traditional Ethiopian music he grew up with in the countryside. His mother had ...

Like most traditional Ethiopian families, Sancho’s parents wanted him to study and pursue a ‘proper’ career. But when they realised he was hell-bent on making a career in music they ...

Mulatu’s innovations were anchored by his childhood memories of Ethiopian traditional secular and church music. It was further inflected by harmony classes at the Berklee School and welded ...

You’d expect a conversation with Mulatu Astatke to be about music. He is, after all, the father of a musical genre: Ethio-jazz. But when he talks about the art form, he tends to focus on its ...

One of the last remaining ‘azmari bets’ (poetry/music houses) in the Ethiopian capital has been saved from demolition to make way for a skyscraper. But as Addis Ababa pushes to modernise, many worry ...

A one-man band, equally at home with the vibraphone and the conga, a Cuban drum, he created a unique musical blend in the 1960s, a mix of traditional Ethiopian music, funk brass, Afro-beat ...

Abate is the president and choreographer of ELEL Dance Team, a dance team that specializes in Ethiopian and Eritrean traditional dances. The club wasn’t recognized as an official group for ...