Monday, 29 November 2010

Lunch with Mulatu

Friday 26th November

This post's title speaks for itself.  We had lunch with Mulatu Astatqe!  And we had a lot to talk about. Besides being the living legend he actually is, Mulatu is an incredibly interesting and generous person with a lot of stories and anecdotes to tell.  He also has very strong and frank opinions about music, which is a trait I personally admire.

We chatted about good and bad fusion in music, the development of ethio-jazz today, his meeting with Duke Ellington in Addis and a lot of stories involving the future staging of the opera he has written etc etc etc.  I can barely remember the food I had in my plate but I'll definitely remember this lunch for a while!

He promised he'd listen to our album and give us his honest opinion, as well as a guided visit to his music school in Addis sometime next week, so looking forward to that.

Before we parted we took the obligatory photo together, and one with his car, a gorgeous old red Mazda he calls "Lucy": the personal ride of the father of Ethiopian jazz himself!

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