During the second half of the 20th century, cosmopolitan Ethiopians were delighted to see jazz giant Duke Ellington receive their country’s Medal of Honor from Emperor Haile Selassie. At the same time ...

Ethiopian jazz master Mulatu Astatke will be taking a break from his extensive 2018 European concert tour to play at the 19th Cape Town International Jazz Festival. This should come as no surprise ...

The classically trained musician was associated with the jazz genre and spent her life in a convent. She will remain in death as much as in life a figure of beautiful contradictions. Her legacy as a ...

Every Friday from 2016 until recently in a small, second-floor room of the Crystal City restaurant Enjera, Ethiopian guitarist Selam Seyoum Woldemariam has led his trio through minor key, ...

Most of us don’t think of music as a science. Mulatu Astatke, the Ethiopian vibraphonist who created the style known as “Ethio-jazz,” says he’s never thought of his invention as anything else. “I’ve ...

ADDIS ABABA, April 30 (Reuters) - Young Ethiopians packed into the compound of the Swedish embassy in Addis Ababa on Saturday night to savour an "Ethio Jazz" performance, an annual festival that ...

Falcetto was a promoter of music when he first heard Ethiopian music in 1984. As he explained when I met him, “A friend of mine was a stage manager for a theatre troupe who had been touring Africa and ...

Admas draws from and rearranges “golden era” Ethiopian music with then-fairly-new synthesizer and drum-machine rhythms. Steve Kiviat Admas. From left, clockwise: Abegasu Shiota, Henock Temesgen, ...

At a hotel in Addis Ababa well-known for hosting jazz greats, thousands of fans lined up on a Saturday night to headbang along with what is still a rarity in Ethiopia's diverse music scene -- a rock ...

Cutting through the chatter of passersby on 18th Street deciding where to eat or waiting in line at Songbyrd, the sound of a saxophone floats from Bossa Bistro + Lounge. It is the first Thursday of ...

On Nov. 9, around 200 people packed into the Signet Society for the second annual Ethio-Jazz Soiree, hosted and organized by Harvard’s Eritrean and Ethiopian Students Association (EESA). Enlivened ...

After a decade and a half break, the always interesting Either/Orchestra is back with another compelling recording—albeit one recorded in 2011 and 2012, and only now, in 2026, seeing the light of day.