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Tag Archives: Ethio-Jazz
Awesome Tapes from Africa’s Brian Shimkovitz has done a brilliant job over the past seven years or so of bringing new life to legendary artists whose genre-shifting music has often been lost in the sea of modern sounds. One of these prolific musicians is Ethiopian Hailu Mergia, the keyboard and accordion...
Following a string of sold-out shows, this April the father of Ethio-Jazz returns to London for two unique shows at Camden’s iconic Jazz Café. A cult figure in the world of global music, Mulatu Astatke is known for his blend of pop, jazz, traditional Ethiopian music, Latin rhythms, Caribbean reggae, and...
![Album Review: Arat Kilo – Nouvelle Fleur [Eklektik, 27th May 2016]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/003d9262-335x335.jpeg)
If you’ve never listened to ethio-jazz, a genre very popular in the bars and hotels of Addis Ababa during the 1960s and ’70s, Arat Kilo’s new album Nouvelle Fleur could be the perfect introduction. The Parisian band, whose name comes from a famous monument in the Ethiopian capital, brought into...
It’s always good to go back to the Family. You can constantly feel at home with them and experience that comfortable atmosphere which smoothly makes you at ease. I don’t know if that’s because of the music they play, attitude they have, or good vibes they give out, but every...
Apologies to anyone thinking this might be the case, but no, the original Ethio-jazz architect is not Mulatu Astatke. The genius from Jimma is the undeniable model maker and developer of the more recent style. However, to sketch and lay out what has become an unequal combination between traditional African...
Indulgent, complex, studied and immediate. Sons of Kemet’s criminally conceptual rhythms belie the overriding catchiness of a sound that dishes out hooks a plenty. Ominous lighting introduced the band who kicked things of with Tom Skinner and, newly cropped, Seb Rochford battering syncopated West African rhythms. This was tribal jazz...
![Album Review: Family Atlantica – Cosmic Unity [Soundway, 13th May 2016]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/20160301102836-35e07520-3b01-4cb6-8bfd-f5309380c774-335x332.jpg)
Family Atlantica is ‘London’s musical melting pot at it’s very best’ according to reviews from The Guardian. The band, which consists of London-born multi-instrumentalist Jack Yglesias, Venezuelan vocalist Luzmira Zerpa, and half-Nigerian, half-Ghanian percussionist Kwame Crentsil, started out in an abandoned vicarage in Hackney, East London, before winning fans over with...
Sons of Kemet are bringing jazz to another level broadening its horizons even further. The London-based quartet, which started to play together in 2011, represents a step-forward for the genre. They indeed decided not simply to add some New Orleans dixie-fragrance, the “post” prefix and unpredictability to their double-drums, sax and tuba...
Since his contribution to the soundtrack of Jim Jarmusch’s 2005 movie Broken Flowers Ethiopian musician Mulatu Astatke has become a global “pop-star”. However, this is a recent event in his fifty-year career, and his many fans have always considered him to be something special. His latest performance at the Roundhouse...
