Episode 35 — Mulatu Astatke, Pentatonic Worlds and Ethio Jazz

This week’s episode is a special one — part deep-dive, part archive, and part tribute to a true pioneer. After seeing Mulatu Astatke’s farewell tour at the London Jazz Festival, I decided it was finally time to bring out something I’ve been sitting on for years: the full interview I recorded with him back in 2018 while making Collaborations Volume One with Hackney Colliery Band.

Mulatu is often described as the father of Ethio jazz, a musical universe that blends Ethiopian pentatonic modes, tribal traditions and the harmonic language of jazz. Even if you think you don’t know his music, you probably do — it’s all over film soundtracks and has been sampled by everyone from Talib Kweli to Kanye West.

In this episode I use that interview as a jumping-off point to explore Ethiopian musical traditions, unusual scales, tribal brass instruments, collaborations across cultures, and how all of this ended up shaping global music.

Science, shells and sound 🌊

It’s been a science-heavy few weeks. I was recently featured on the New Scientist podcast talking about shells, underwater sound, physics and evolution (welcome if that’s how you found the show!). And the Universe of Music shows with Chris Lintott continue — including an “End of the Universe funeral” at Jamboree in London.

The brand-new website for the podcast is live: originofthepieces.com. You’ll find a fully searchable archive of every episode, complete with transcripts, tags, and my favourite bit: an interactive globe showing where each episode was recorded or where the music we talk about comes from.

Wilton’s Music Hall – two shows on 24th January 🎟

On 24th January 2026 I’m doing not one but two live shows at Wilton’s Music Hall:

• 2pm — Origin of the Pieces: KIDS, a family-friendly version of the show

• 7pm — Evening show with a brilliant line-up of guests

You can find tickets and more info via Wilton’s, or via the main site at originofthepieces.com.

Today’s deep dive: Ethio jazz & Mulatu’s world 🎷

Ethio jazz really bloomed in the 1960s and 70s. Mulatu’s journey took him from London to Berklee, and then back to Ethiopia where he fused jazz training with the country’s pentatonic modes and tribal musical traditions. His influence now runs through hip-hop, neo-soul, film music and beyond.

In this episode we talk about:

• Ethiopian pentatonic scales (with some quick melodica demonstrations)

• The diminished scale used by certain Ethiopian traditions

• The Derashe tribe and their musical language

• The mbira (thumb piano) and its piano-like layout

• Traditional Ethiopian brass traditions — instruments resembling trumpet, trombone and baritone sax

• Mulatu’s collaborations with Duke Ellington, Talib Kweli and others

• How African musical ideas have shaped global genres

• Cultural exchange, and why learning each other’s musical languages matters

You’ll also hear a live recording of “Derashe” from Hackney Colliery Band’s 2019 Barbican show with Mulatu, originally part of the Collaborations Volume One project.

Full transcript

Hello, my name's Steve Pretty. I'm a musician, composer and performer from London, and welcome to my podcast, Steve Pretty On The Origin of the Pieces.
This is the show that helps you to hear, understand and enjoy music in new ways. Hello, musically curious people. It's lovely to be back in your ears and indeed eyes again, because a reminder that this is going out on video on YouTube and Spotify, as well as audio.
There's a few bits in this show that you might want to tune into the video for, but anyway, I hope you've had a good couple of weeks. I've had a very fun, interesting couple of weeks, largely science-based couple of weeks, actually, which is quite an unusual thing for a musician to say, perhaps, but those regular listeners among you will know that I do a lot of work with scientists. I love the crossover between science and music in all sorts of various ways.
In the past, I've spoken on recent episodes to Richard Sabin from the Natural History Museum. I really enjoyed that episode about whale earwax and other things associated with underwater sound. That was a few episodes ago.
And of course, I've got my ongoing tour with Chris Lintop, which I'm really enjoying. We're doing our Universe of Music show. A few weeks ago, we did an End of the Universe funeral for the End of the Universe show at Jamboree in London, which was great fun.
And we're doing our End of the Universe show around and about. We've got one or two more in the New Year. And then some festivals and other stuff in the New Year as well.
So it's been a lot of fun. But science has been on my mind a lot recently, partly because I was featured on the New Scientist Podcast recently. They did a feature on me and my obsession with shells and playing shells and the evolution of music and the physics of music and why we even do music at all, the neuroscience of music.
So yeah, if you like the crossover between music and science, do go and check out the New Scientist Podcast with a special episode on me. And welcome to listeners from the New Scientist Podcast, who might have discovered me there. This show is about all things music.
Again, lots of science stuff in here, but really also lots of global music, a bit of musicology, a lot of silly fun along the way, learning about how music works, why it exists, speaking to the people who make it. Speaking of which, last episode was the episode with Gangster Grass, which I really, really enjoyed. That is a band from America combining bluegrass and hip hop.
Very unusual combination, perhaps, but I really enjoyed talking to them. And I'm going to be guesting with them. If you listen to this in time, it's on the Saturday, the 29th of November, at the Garage in Highbury.
I'm going to be guesting with them for their show in London. And yeah, really enjoyed, really enjoyed talking to them. I thought there's some really interesting insights, particularly, I think, about the overlap between bluegrass and hip hop, and about how this, at a certain point in the sort of 50s, music got divided, falsely really, but for historic cultural reasons, really into what was, at the time, I think, called race music terribly, and white music.
So basically, white music at the time veered towards bluegrass and country, and so-called, at the time, race music, veered more towards our rhythm of blues and soul and that kind of thing. And that split was kind of artificial, because until that point, there was a lot of overlap. And that was all really to do with the racial politics of America at the time, and not to do with the music itself.
So I think Gangstergrass make a really good case for bringing those two worlds back a bit more in line with one another. And I think they speak very interestingly about that amongst many other things. So do go back and check out that episode if that sounds like it's going to be of interest.
And before we go any further, just a couple of little plugs. I have a very shiny new website, which I'm very, very proud of and excited about. It has a complete archive of this whole show, every episode, full transcripts.
It's all tagged very carefully, so you can go through and search for anything you might wanna learn about. You know, you think, oh wait, I'm sure, did Steve do an episode about the Ood? Yes, I did.
If you search for it in the search bar, you can find that. My favorite bit of it, I think, is a world map. There's a globe that you can kind of spin around, and there's pins on that world map, and you can see where episodes have been featured musicians from or have been recorded.
So, for example, the Gangster Grass episode, they are from Brooklyn in New York, so there's a little pin in New York. If you click on that, that will bring up the Gangster Grass episode. But there's also a pin in Finland because it was recorded in Finland.
So yeah, it's a little kind of global overview of some of the musicians I've talked to, and I'm really, really excited about populating that more as we go through the future episodes. So if you go to originofthepieces.com, you can check out that website. One final plug, and then we're going to get on with the show.
And that is that I have these two Wilton's Music Hall shows coming up in January. The 24th of January, I'm doing not one, but two Wilton's Music Hall shows. I'm doing an evening show as usual, but then in the daytime, I am doing a kid show.
I'm doing a 2 p.m. show, specifically aimed at families and kids. I've got some incredible guests, both for the evening show and for that first ever Origin of the Pieces kids edition in the afternoon. So if you go to wiltonsmusichall.com, you can find out all about that.
Or of course, that's also accessible from originofthepieces.com. So enough plugs, on with the show.
And as the temporary theme song Sting fades into the background, we're gonna crack on with the show. Just a reminder that the reason there is a temporary theme song that's called Farting On The Sofa, which I explained a couple of episodes ago and did give a breakdown of, is because the original theme song, which is a tune called Mm Mm, from the Hackney Colliery Band album, Collaborations Volume One, that had to be taken down because of a copyright strike on a tune that I wrote and owned the copyright to. So go figure, but I am working on getting that back.
Hopefully all of the original theme will be restored quite soon. But meanwhile, yes, we've got Farting On The Sofa written by my daughter. So go back a couple of episodes and you can check out why that is.
Anyway, today, very, very excited because we've got a true pioneer. Today we're digging deep into Ethio Jazz. Now, Ethio Jazz is of course jazz from Ethiopia.
This is a genre tombola episode. For new listeners, that's where I take the list of 1300 or so genres from Wikipedia and pick one at random and dig into it and sometimes try and make some music in it, talk to someone in that genre. This is not randomly chosen today.
Today it was chosen because I'm a huge fan of Ethio Jazz and I've been lucky enough to work with one of its true pioneers, a man called Mulatu Astatke. Some of you may know. If you don't know him, you will have certainly heard his music because even if Ethio Jazz might sound like a kind of niche genre, actually it's very, very widely heard these days.
You can hear it in a lot of film soundtracks. You can hear it on a lot of even ads. It's been sampled a lot by everyone from incredible musicians including Taleb Quailey and yeah, it's really a really fantastic music.
Even Kanye West has sampled this music. So incredible musicians plus Kanye West. I do actually like Kanye's music, but just shame about everything else about Kanye.
Now at the time of recording in November 2025, Mulatu has just finished his farewell tour. I saw his last ever London show during the London Jazz Festival a couple of weeks ago, which was absolutely incredible. Absolutely loved that show.
Such a great band. He's got together there, many of whom I can count as friends now, I'm happy to say. And I thought just inspired by that last show, what we would do today is take a deep dive into this music through Mulatu himself, because I worked with Mulatu back in 2018 and onwards for a couple of years after that, because I made with a Hackney Colliery Band a record I'm very proud of called Collaborations Vol.
1, which featured Mulatu very heavily. We did a couple of tunes with Mulatu and he also joined us at our Barbican show. We did a big headline show at the Barbican Hall in London, which was a real privilege to be able to do that.
And Mulatu was one of our many guests in that show. So yeah, today what I'm going to do is play an interview that I actually did with him during the making of that album, which was way back in 2018. So some of the references might be slightly out of date.
At one point we refer to trying to get the band to go over to Ethiopia, Hackney Colliery Band in Ethiopia. We haven't been able to make that work yet, largely due to the political situation there being a bit unstable. But perhaps it's something we can revisit at some point.
But anyway, this in honor of Mulatu's kind of farewell tour, this is a special deep dive into Ethiopian jazz. This is a type of music that was really flourished in the 1960s and 70s. Mulatu studied kind of in a fairly conventional way in London and then in America in Berkeley.
And he has this kind of incredible formal education, but then he did something really, really special with that. And that is to bring his own take on the jazz tradition, take some of the kind of tribal music of Ethiopia and integrate that with his jazz education and with his jazz kind of sensibility. He's worked with everyone.
He's a true elder statesman. He's worked with Duke Ellington. And again, he's been sampled by all these incredible musicians over the years and can be heard on all of these soundtracks to films and all over the place.
But before I hand over to Mulatu from that interview in 2018, recorded at Livingston Studio in North London, I'm just going to play a bit of our gig together at the Barbican. This is a tune called Derashe, which Mulatu refers to in this interview. So here is live from the Barbican, Hackney Colliery Band featuring Mulatu Astatke recorded in 2019.
So, we are here in the studio, in Livingston Studio with the great Mulatu Astatke, and myself, Steve Pretty, from Hackney Colliery Band, and myself, Olly Blackman from the Hackney Colliery Band. And we've had a really incredible day here. Mulatu has been very generous with his time.
He's given us basically a whole afternoon of playing. So thank you so much for playing our music.
Really thank you for inviting me. It was very interesting music I've heard, which is very nice, very unusual, but it's beautiful music. And I think I've really enjoyed doing the recording with you people here.
It's beautiful.
Oh, thank you. Well, it's been sounding amazing. We've had a whole three rooms of instruments set up for you, the timbales, the conga, the bongos, and of course the vibraphone, and actually the whirlitzer keyboard as well.
And but you've played them all, you've played all of them the whole afternoon. And so it's been it's been really lovely to hear.
I really enjoyed it. It was a really beautiful, great afternoon today.
Good, excellent.
It was really interesting to see you move around the instruments and it was just interesting to see which one you chose after which you kind of it seemed like you had an idea once you'd played one, you had an idea to play another one and then move to the percussion. Was there any thought there or was it just really organic? You were just feeling your way through it?
Well, you know, I really love all of the instruments. I love them and I think it was also a great opportunity to play those instruments in your recording today and well, you know, I mean, congas as an African, I really enjoy playing congas and the vibes in the piano. Of course, I went to school for it.
I was at Berklee College in Boston and that was it. It was great and also I've studied in England as well at Trinity College. Yeah, it was a long time ago.
Yeah, studying classic music. But that was great though. Really enjoyed it here and I love this instruments really and enjoy playing them.
So this album that we are working on with Hackney Colliery Band is an album of collaborations with artists from many different genres. And we played you some of the tracks we've been working on. And you are someone who's collaborated with many, many people over the years.
Some incredible people including Duke Ellington, is this right?
Oh yes, yes.
And lots of amazing people.
When we were visiting Ethiopia, yeah.
That's an amazing story. Can you tell us about that?
Well, you know, Ellington was one of the great people I've admired all the time. I remember studying about Ellington, Duke Ellington, and also Bill Evans, Gail Evans, which I really enjoyed and loved listening to. And we used to do a lot of analyzing work about these people at schools.
And I always admired Ellington and really had this great opportunity. They have this, an African tour called the Jazz Ambassadors, the State Department. So he managed to come over to Ethiopia.
And they said, like, Mulatu is from Berklee and from America. And I think Ellington probably could enjoy talking and sharing experience with me. That's how I met him.
And was so beautiful and great. And I also did one beautiful musical arrangement, which I called The Dole. It's the sixth century music from Ethiopia, Orthodox Church.
So that was so interesting. So I somehow arranged it on a jazz style. And it was a so great opportunity for Ellington to perform it at the Addis Ababa Hilton that evening.
And it was really my happiest day. Because, you know, I mean, he is the man I admire. He has a fantastic musician, the big band.
And he managed to play my arrangement, which is so great. And what he said was, which I'll never forget, he said, I never expected this from an African.
Right.
It was great.
Interesting. Amazing. Yeah.
And what is it that you enjoy about collaborating with people across different traditions and genres? Because you've worked with many different people from rappers, you were telling us you just you work with Taleb Quailey. But you've worked with many people.
What is it that you enjoy about collaborating with other musicians?
Well, you know, I mean, one is like you share experiences with different musicians, which is which I think which I really love. Like, you know, sharing experience and talk about, you know, whatever. And also collaboration with other musicians.
And also, I love to really talk about the African contribution to the world culturally. And that's another very interesting topic. So whoever I meet, whoever I manage to, you know, to meet the musicians, we always talk about this.
We share experiences and we talk about the Ethiopian experience, the Ethiopian, what the Hatshis are giving to the world musically, which is so great, you know. And we talk about that and also we exchange ideas about their experience as well, what it is. And for them, you see, usually most of these musicians are made, especially most of them really doesn't know much about the contribution of the Bush people in Africa, because they are so much neglected from, you know, from my experience.
And I think we should know more about them, we should talk more about them, because they are so interesting and so creative. And especially like in Ethiopia, if you go to some part of the Ethiopia, like you find instruments sound like trombones, you find instruments sound like trumpets, like an instrument sound like contrabass, a lot of string instruments. But always I ask myself, which one was first?
Was it the people from the Bushes? Or is it the one we hear in the world now? So, you know, I've been trying to find out, but I think it's mostly, it's their contribution to music development, the Bush people, I think.
I'm sure you're right. And you were talking, when we were recording early, you were talking about Derashe, one of the pieces we worked on today, and how this is actually the name of a tribe in Ethiopia, is that right?
Yeah, they found southern of Ethiopia, and this is a tribe called Derashe. And it's so interesting tribes, you know, and usually like Ethiopian music are based in four different modes and five notes only. That's how we use, like, you know, you call it pentatonic scales.
Hello, Steve back in the studio, just cutting in briefly to explain about pentatonic scales. Now, as it happens, the next episode I'm going to do at the beginning of December is going to feature pentatonic scales quite a lot for reasons that will become clear then, but just a very quick overview meanwhile. I've got here a melodica, which is a kind of sort of piano instrument that you, a keyboard instrument that you blow into, and I'm just going to demonstrate a few things about some scales.
So normally when we think of scales in the West, we think of, for example, major scales, so that's all the white notes C to C. If you're in the video, you can see this, I'll play it.
Yeah, and so that is really a seven note scale, right? Cause so C to C, so C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, and that is the basis of most of our, when we think about Western music, major scales, minor scales, most of our scales have got seven different notes in, right? Pentatonic scale, as you might be able to guess from the name, is five notes, five notes.
Now on a piano keyboard like this, you can see it's colour coded, that actually corresponds with the five black notes. So if I play from, I'm gonna play from here, this F sharp, you'll hear a pentatonic scale.
So it's a five note scale. That was just the black notes going up from F sharp upwards and back down again. So pentatonic scales are really just a different way of organising our melodies and our harmony.
So again, rather than having seven notes like we might have in the major or minor scale, we have just five notes. And that means we have to use very different creative choices if you like to construct our melodies. Now, as I'll deal with next week, a lot of very well known music is essentially based off these pentatonic scales, even in the West.
But when we come to music from Ethiopia, and in fact from large parts of the world, but just focusing on Ethiopia for now, we've got some quite unusual pentatonic scales. So the one I just played is called a major pentatonic. We call it a major pentatonic in the West.
But that sounds again like this. I'll put it again just on the white notes now so that you can see and hear that.
So that's definitely got quite a recognizable sound, very kind of happy major-y sound, but there is a whole variety of different pentatonic scales that we can construct. But in Ethiopia and large parts of the world, there's different types of five note scales. So still pentatonic scales, but different flavors if you like, colors in the palette.
And one of the most famous from Ethiopia is called the Tessiter Minor, and that is, rather than having this sound, it has this sound.
So a very, very different type of sound.
So that immediately is very evocative for me, and I can really get a sense of a different kind of sound world somehow from this.
Now, for those of you who are musically, technically minded, that's because we have a flattened third. So here in C major, it's in C rather, it's an E flat, and we've also got a flattened sixth. So that is an A flat here.
Don't worry if you don't know what I'm talking about there, don't worry, but you can hear, here's this note. As opposed to. And here's this note.
As opposed to.
So that little subtle difference, just moving it down a semitone, moving it down a half step, creates a huge difference in the way that music can be played and heard and understood and the moods that are created. Yeah, so I just wanted to cut in and explain what a pentatonic scale is, and particularly what an Ethiopian pentatonic scale is. There are many other different kinds as well in Ethiopia, but that's one of them.
But there's one more scale thing we need to do before we go any further, because he talks about it next and maybe not everyone will understand it, and that is to talk about a diminished scale. Now, that is a type of scale that has been used, and Mulatu talks about it being used in jazz and by Debussy, and he's quite right there. But he talks about a particular group of musicians in Ethiopia who use this scale rather than the pentatonic scale.
So again, it's quite a different sound. That sounds like this. This is actually the main difference about it, rather than being a five note scale or a seven note scale, is that this scale has eight different notes.
So between, we can divide it. Here's a five note scale. Here's the Ethiopian five note scale.
Okay, and here is the diminished scale that he talks about.
So quite different, a lot more notes, a lot more choices. So hopefully that will kind of give you some context for when he talks about pentatonic scales versus diminished scales. Right, back to the interview.
These tribes, what I'm talking about, they use 12 notes. As you know, in jazz, especially like we have like two diminished scales that we use for improvising for whatever anyway. So these tribes don't play two, but they play one, the whole half.
But it was so amazing. How did the AES be able to listen to this? Because all we know is Charlie Parker and Debussy, who used the diminished scales, who used this.
These are the two people we know. But we never know about these people. So, you know, I do quite a lot of research.
I go around the country. I go to different parts in Africa. And I listen and I admire those people who do these things.
So, it's so interesting, you know, even now. Also, I can tell you a very interesting one. The Ambassadors.
Steve again, back in the studio. Just cutting in to talk about Ambassadors. Because Ambassadors are instruments like this.
They're also called thumb pianos sometimes. They're really beautiful instruments. You find them in lots of parts of Africa.
And they can be played incredibly virtuosically. They're really, really amazing instruments. I have a couple of them myself, which I like to sort of fiddle around with.
I am no great Mbira player. But they're a very, very important instrument in all sorts of different parts of Africa. And you play them by plucking with your thumb, like that.
And that rattle that you can hear, this isn't particularly tuned at the moment, this is just picked off my shelf. That rattle that you can hear is often deliberate. So sometimes they will have things like bottle caps attached to them so that it will be an extra rattle.
Yeah, again, not tuned at the moment, but you get the idea, right? This is what an Mbira is. So when he talks about them shortly, having two rows of these tines, these metal rods, he's talking about them being laid out like a piano.
So yeah, just a little heads up, that's the Mbira. I would love to do a special episode on that. So if you know any great Mbira players that I could talk to, then maybe we can do a special entertaining noises section on the Mbira one day.
Mbira, I remember me playing for the Mozart 250 years celebration in Vienna, Austria, and I was invited there. So the man who was organizing was being commissioned was Peter Sellar, not the actor, the opera man. So he somehow contacted me and was very interesting.
So I said, he asked me, and I told him, what, why don't we give African piano to Mozart's birthday at the present, you know. So I said, okay, now if you have to say, well, if you want me to do this, you have to send me to Zimbabwe, you have to do research, you have to do this. So he said, anything, he said, anything you want to just ask him, he can go and do it.
So I said, okay, send me to Zimbabwe. So I went to this place called the Imbira Center. So interesting, man.
So I got about seven Imbira players with my vibraphones and the percussion. So we did about one week rehearsal in Zimbabwe. It was so interesting.
We see the Imbira, they play the bass on this hand and the melody up there.
On the same Imbira?
See, the same system as a standway, the same as a piano. I was so really surprised, you know, and I start playing with them, rehearsal. Really, I tell you, when I hear it to them, they sound like a box guitar.
They sound exactly like a box guitar when they play, like a Mexican.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, yeah. It was so interesting. So I told them, okay, that's why I said I want to give a present to Mozart, because, which was first again, was it the standway or the African piano?
Because they are the same system. But the thing is, those are, actually they are a bit limited on their equations and their thinking, because they play only one note, that's all, they can't go any further. But to come to, you know, there are so many geniuses, so very advanced people in Europe, all over the world, so they can take that sound and expand it and make it big.
So, that's our lack of each question, but in the future, I hope, like, they'll be equated and really make that instrument be able to play 12-note music.
Right, right, right.
I hope so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We were talking about the similarities between some of the instruments in our band, so trombones, trumpets, saxophones, obviously drums, tuba, with some of the traditional tribal instruments. You were talking about the trombones, the tribal trombones?
Zumbada.
Zumbada, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Can you tell us a bit about about those? Because obviously we are all brass musicians and drummers, and so we're interested to know about other traditions of brass music or of wind music.
Well, you know, I mean, it's funny. We have an instrument called uh, Kekezi, which sounds like trumpets. So there are four, three guys playing, blowing up the instruments.
It sounds like trumpets. And we have an instrument called like Zumbada, which sounds like trombones. Beautiful sounds.
And we have another instrument which sounds like a baritone sax.
Right.
So those are so interesting instruments. I think like those could be beautifully blend to your sounds.
Well we were hoping that, yeah, maybe one day we can get out to Addis and play your club over there. It would be a dream, I think.
Looking forward for that. Not only you coming and playing, but doing an experimental work with these people. Share experience and find out about their contribution of what they do also, which will make it very, very interesting.
It would be amazing to be able to do that. So if you're listening…
Very interesting, my friend.
If you're listening, British Council, cough up some money to do that, please.
I have your email, so I will pass it to him.
Yes, please do, please do. We are asking all of our guests, when you hear the words brass band, what do you think of? What's the first image or the first band that comes into your mind?
Or what sort of sound or tradition do you think of when you hear the words brass band?
When you hear or you listen about the jazz music, Dixieland or those places, they have these sounds and this is what I actually remember because I have very high respect to them because those are the sources for jazz music. So I really love the brass band, I really love to listen and enjoy it because those are the sources in Dixieland, Southland, America, that's where all this jazz and something whatever started off. So I have this very high respect to the brass bands, very much.
I really love to listen and to know more about that. Yes, I enjoy it so much.
Oh, fantastic.
Just talking about collaborating once again, what would you say is the most important thing to bring to a collaboration from yourself as a musician? What's the thing that you try and bring to it to make it work?
Well, you know, I mean, there are all kinds of different styles in the world of music. So probably with collaborations with different musicians and different approaches to music, always we can learn from each other, which is so important and so great, you know. And I've managed to play with a lot of different bands before.
And it's so great, you know, like learning from each other, experiencing whatever you can get from each other, which is so beautiful, so great. But me, always, I have this, I think it always comes to my mind, as how we can develop and improvise African cultural musical instruments. That's what I really think about.
In fact, I tell you, I met one American. We played in Boston. You know, we have this instrument called the Washington.
It sounds like a flute in Ethiopia. So this guy is a baritone sax player. It's a big band.
I used to play with him. Maybe you've heard of a band called Either Orchestra. We played for about three years together.
I was with him in Boston. And this guy is so interesting. He picked up this Washington.
He made himself about four or five different Washington's. And he plays so beautiful.
Really?
He's in my CD. There is a CD, a tune I wrote called Ethio Blues.
Right.
So he, his song was in Washington on that composition. And really, you know, meet that kind of person who is so great and who just transformed himself and learned something new instruments, which is so great. Like you, like one of you guys study Zumbara.
Yeah.
It would be so beautiful. Well, something like that.
It would be amazing. I mean, that's how this whole collaboration came together. So when you and I met about a year or two ago.
Exactly.
And you were saying to me, we have these amazing instruments in Ethiopia called the Zumbara. And so that's why we chose the tracks we did, because you suggested these tracks come from this tradition. So it would be amazing to take it back and learn those instruments.
But you should do that, because maybe you can improvise and upgrade these instruments with your knowledge and with your experience. But this guy now is playing washing, he plays really great. But I tell him, I want to hear you play European music with this washing.
Right, right, right.
That's what I'm telling him always.
Right, take it the other way.
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm telling him. To expand it, to make it more acceptable to the world.
But it's about exchanges, isn't it? I think what we are trying to do with this album is to celebrate the differences between the people we are collaborating with and ourselves, but also the similarities. So saying, this is great that you do something very different, we are going to try a little bit of a taste of that, and we are going to bring you into our world for a little bit, try a little taste of what we do, and try and celebrate what's the same, but also what's really different.
I think that's what we are trying to do with this record. And so, yeah, what you are describing...
Well, what we are doing, actually, is really fantastic. It's great. Actually, I'm really looking forward to how it ends up.
So are we.
But I think it's a beautiful project. Oh, thank you, my friend.
Just to hear, Steve and I have both worked quite a few hours editing the tracks and the bits that we played in the band, and then you came down today and just transformed the sound. It was amazing to hear, just the way the textures changed. It threw us into the ethio jazz sound world, and you're amazing playing.
Thank you.
It was a pleasure.
I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed your band, I enjoyed the musical arrangement you did, and I hope like this project will be finished, so to listen to it on the CD and enjoy it.
Yeah, yeah, well we can't wait.
I hope so.
Thank you so much for all your hard work today, and your kind words and contribution, and we hope to play with you again soon.
Thank you, sir. Really thank you.
Thank you.
I really enjoyed it. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
And my huge thanks to the great Mulatu Astatke once again for that interview. It may be a few years old now, that interview, but there's still, I think, so many interesting insights there. And it's just a great privilege to talk to someone with that pedigree, someone who's worked with Duke Ellington.
If you're not a jazz fan, I'm sure you've still heard of Duke Ellington, but he's one of the true greats from the early part of jazz history. And so having Mulatu as this kind of living figure who ties us back from the present right through to that early history of jazz is something quite special. And of course, what he's done with Ethiopian music and bringing, as he talks about, Ethiopian, Bush people's music out into the mainstream.
And again, for that to then end up sampled by Kanye West and all these people, Naz and all these people is really, really something. And so, yeah, what a gent. So thank you to Mulatu.
And thanks also to Oli, my colleague Oli Blackman from Hackney Colliery Band, who joined me in that interview from back in 2018. And of course, Hackney Colliery Band from our Collaborations Volume One show that we did at the Barbican back in 2019. That was it.
It was a really special show that I, yeah, it was very, very privileged to put that show together with so many brilliant guests. Yeah, so if you were there, let me know if you remember it. Speaking of Hackney Colliery Band, we've just announced a huge range of dates across the UK in spring 2026, so if you're interested in that, I will be putting something out on my newsletter, so originofthepieces.com or of course hackneycollieryband.com and you will find all of those things there, so you can see if we're coming to a town near you.
And I'm sure we will play at least one of those Ethiopian tunes on that tour. So yeah, if you're interested in learning more about that, there's loads of great resources online, but also maybe come and see the band, come and talk to us after, or just get in touch with me on Instagram, on social media, wherever you would like, and I can direct you in the right direction to learn more. Anyway, thanks once again for listening.
I'm going to put out another request to, especially if you're new here and you've enjoyed this episode and you've enjoyed maybe digging back into the back catalogue a bit, do go and check it out again. My website is a great place to find all of those back issues of the podcast. So that's originofthepieces.com.
You can have an explore there and let me know what you discover. But please do rate and review the show. It really, really helps.
Spreading the word really, really helps as well in person or share it with a friend by email or by on social media or whatever. But yeah, rating and reviewing the show really helps it to get a bit more profile, to get some more listeners, to get some more brilliant guests and all the rest of it. Meanwhile, get your tickets.
Christmas is coming. It's a great time to get tickets for Wilton's Music Hall on the 24th of January. Don't forget there's a kids show in the afternoon and the standard show in the evening.
So yes, roll up for that. It's going to be a lot of fun. Anyway, I think that's about enough for now and I will speak to you in a couple of weeks.
Stay musically curious. See you then. Bye.
Derashe Mulatu Astatke, The Master.
And the Hackney Colliery Band's The Students. Thank you very much. We're going to take a break.
See you shortly.