Traveling Troubadour: Mulatu Astatke — intelligenttravel.nationalgeographic.com

Riffing with Ethiopia’s jazz master in the 1970s, Ethiopian musician Mulatu Astatke made waves when he introduced a new style of music that layered jazz improvisation with Ethiopian folk rhythms and its traditional five-note scale. Now in his early 70s, the father of Ethio-jazz is still mixing things up. Last year, Astatke released Sketches From Ethiopia, an experimental album heavy in indigenous instruments, from the harplike kora to the masinko lute. He also recently opened African Jazz Village, a music club and school in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, where he’s training the next generation of African musicians while spurring tourism in his oft overlooked country.

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