Mulatu Astatke

Mulatu Astatke retools his past in Mulatu Plays Mulatu, minus the nostalgia goggles

Mulatu Astatke revisits his own blueprint with Mulatu Plays Mulatu, offering a series of self-covers that gently redraw the lines of Ethio-jazz. The project doesn’t seek reinvention, but rather re-articulation—pulling beloved tracks out of their original frames and handing them a new sonic polish.

The outcome reads less like nostalgia and more like a scientist re-testing his hypotheses with updated instruments. The timbres are crisper, the arrangements subtly reshaped, though the pulse remains unmistakably his.