BY MULUGETA GUDETA
“A prophet is not respected in his country of birth” says an old Ethiopian adage. The late Maitre Artist Afewerk Tekle, one of the internationally acclaimed pioneers of modern Ethiopian painting never enjoyed the celebrity status he deserved here at home. Although most of his paintings were not understood and their significance seldom properly esteemed, the person himself was sometimes made the object of ridicule. In an interview in an old magazine called Goh (Dawn), back in the 1970s, Afewerk was quoted (or misquoted) as saying that poverty is the result of laziness while hard work was the fate of the wealthy.
The magazine distorted the artist words and presented them as if all people in Ethiopia who are poor are so because they were lazy. Nonetheless the late Afewerk Tekle did not mean to say that.
According to the magazine article, you become poor because you are lazy and you become wealthy if you work hard. This was considered by the editors as well as the readers of that defunct magazine as an expression of middle class arrogance because Afewerk was even then considered very wealthy. His statements were taken out of context, their meanings distorted as if he made them in absolute terms. His works sold well in foreign countries while hardly anybody here would take them for free. Naturally, art is not for the cynic and nincompoop who express anger at the success of such an artist as Afewerk Tekle.
This was however enough for left wing politicians and newspapers to pour abuse after abuse against him, considering him as the mouthpiece of the old aristocracy that was toppled by the 1974 revolution. That was a time of revolutionary fervor and it was easier then to resort to character assassination than present reasonable arguments. His critics did not understand his art. Instead they chose to defame him in order to vent out their hatred and envy. That was the notorious thinking behind the theory of class struggle.
The same fate and treatment was encountered by Eskunder Bogossian the abstract painter and the most important Ethiopian vanguard artist of his time. The same could be said about the painter poet and writer Gebrekristos Desta who passed away in exile although many of his poems were about his nostalgia of his motherland and the beauty of its landscapes. He was the Ethiopian version of Van Gogh, the celebrated landscape and portrait painter whose Sunflower painting stands out among his masterpieces. Van Gogh was a lover of rural scenes and everyday life of the farmers as Gebrekristos was fond of painting ordinary folks. In other words, Gebrekristo Desta is our Van Gogh.
These artists were neglected and largely unknown in their lifetimes and they only mentioned when they died after relatively brief lives of disappointment and obscurity. In Ethiopian culture or tradition, successful or highly talented people are generally neglected when they are alive only to be adored after they die. That is why artists, in particular are considered unimportant to society and even the media mention their names by way of obituaries. Some of them are quickly forgotten for good.
Only a few of them could take the honorable place reserved for them by posterity. The godfather of the music genre known as Ethio-Jazz is perhaps an exception in the sense that he is relatively well-known while still alive. He is in fact enjoying a long life as compared to his predecessors whose lives were cut short before they could fully express themselves and leave their legacies for eternity. Mulatu Astatke must be luckier than anyone of them. He not only created a new music genre and made successive albums that were commercially successful. He could also enjoy international audience through the many concerts he gave in the most artistic capitals of Europe and the United States.
Throughout his career Mulatu wore many hats although their shapes and colors is based on his artistic achievement. Mulatu is basically a highly gifted and inventive musician. He is also a capable educator of music whose students back in his years at Howard University in the United States are now famous musicians in their own rights and worthy of his legacy. Mulatu is also a music anthropologist who dug out gems after gems of Ethiopian folk music that were buried and neglected by society at large. He not only discovered them but also shaped, molded, blended and married them to the internationally acclaimed music genre in order to create Ethio-Jazz. Mulatu is thus a music alchemist who mixed different genres and came out with a golden music known as Ethio-Jazz. Something like Ethio-Jazz cannot of course be created out of nothing. Mulatu according to his own statements, was influenced such music celebrities as Coltrane and Miles Davies, who pioneered Jazz music which is a black American specialty. Given his background and his early exposure it is not surprising if Mulatu was attracted to jazz music and used it as a raw material to produce his own original version that has now become an international craze.
His music is played, studied, imitated and repeated a myriad times by his followers as well as by ordinary music lovers. No musician in Ethiopia has made an international impact remotely comparable to what Mulatu Astatke has achieved. This is not to undermine the contribution other musicians have made to the development of Ethiopian music. Mulatu stands out as a creator, educator, conductor and folk music instrument player. He brought little known traditional instrument from the darkness they were kept in for centuries and brought them to the world stage. That is what makes Mulatu different from the other Ethiopia musicians who excel in one field only. They are either vocalists, lyricists, composers or conductors.
His years in Howard University both as a student and professor were not only fruitful but also brilliant. He not only deepened Ethio-Jazz fusions but also shaped and influenced many students who later became successful Jazz musicians in their own rights and worthy of his name. His experimentations with traditional Ethiopian music instruments is not only legendary but he was also the first major artist who brought the various music of the forgotten tribes and ethnic groups to international attention and acclaim.
As such he is the genuinely committed musician of the various peoples of Ethiopia whose tunes and melodies he not only mastered but played them in a hybrid form by mixing traditional and modern instruments whose harmonies captivated even foreign audiences with little or no previous acquaintance with traditional Ethiopian music instruments. In this way, Mulatu speaks the universal language of music, which is understood everywhere by everybody. Music rather appeals to the heart and not to reason or philosophy.
Ethiopia is the land of Yared, the pioneer of church music, whose melodies are said to be a combination of natural sounds and divine inspiration. This is of course an amazing feat whose spiritual musings are still celebrated by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and handed down to many generations that still love his religious tunes.
There is some parallel between Yared and Mulatu who is a living legend of Ethiopian Jazz music. Yared’s influence was not confined to his home region in the north of Ethiopia but also inspired many generations down to this century and his name is proudly displayed at the entrance to the only music school in the country where generations after generations of students evoke his name and adored creativity and use him as an immortal inspiration.
Mulatu’s Howard years are also engraved in the annals of the university making Ethio-Jazz a new genre of music studied by scores of foreign students who are proud of his contributions to humanity’s musical appreciation and enjoyment. Writing about his music style, an article on the internet said the following, “One of Ethiopia’s greatest innovations, Ethiopian Jazz, termed “Ethio-jazz,” is a unique fusion of traditional Ethiopian music with jazz, Afro-funk, soul, and Latin rhythms. Marked by eerie and ancient-sounding tones, typical of traditional Ethiopian music, Ethio-jazz also displays the sensual undertones of soulful jazz. Read on to explore the dramatic story of Ethiopia’s most recognizable music genre.”
Mahletay Yared and Mulatu Astatke are in a way the two extremes of Ethiopia’s music achievements. At the one end there is Yared, the beginner of Ethiopia’s music heritage and at the other end there is Mulatu Astatke who has brought Ethiopian music to its highest point of development by turning it into an international music genre. Yared shined at home while Mulatu is basking in international acclaim. The two are also one in the sense that they are two asopects of the same Ethiopian music. Although a secular musician, Mulatu is also keen to use religious melodies and combine it with his Afro-Jazz version. Suffice it to listen to his famous composition of a music piece often played during the fasting season of Lent and played by famous Ethiopia vocalist, Tewodros Tadesse.
Mulatu will no doubt keep on creating, developing, inventing and entertaining his local and international audiences. No doubt he will surprise us anytime with a new music genre or a fusion of Afro and Ethio Jazz or some other version of it. The sky must be the limit for Mulatu who has made his country and the people proud of their music legacy that will continue to shine in the years and decades to come.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD JUNE 17 /2021
