Just Announced: Mulatu Astatke plays Los Angeles on February 21, 2015

Mulatu Astatke will play Royce Hall on the UCLA campus on Saturday, February 21, 2015 at 8:00pm. Astatke is known as the father of Ethio-jazz, which blends traditional Ethiopian music with jazz and other styles of the African diaspora.

Special guest Meklit Hadero, Ethiopian-born singer/songwriter and co-founder of The Nile Project, will open the show.

Info and Tickets

Return to Gorée

A musical road movie, Return to Gorée follows Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour’s historical journey tracing the trail left by slaves and the jazz music they created. Youssou N’Dour’s challenge is to bring back to Africa a jazz repertoire of his own songs to perform a concert in Gorée, the island that today symbolizes the slave trade and stands to honor its victims.

From Atlanta to New Orleans, from New York to Bordeaux and Luxembourg, the songs are transformed, immersed in jazz and gospel. Transcending cultural divisions and rehearsing with of some of the world’s most exceptional musicians, Youssou N’Dour is preparing to return to Africa for the final concert…

africanfilm.com

via Black Film

Hear The Nile Project on SoundCloud

Hear The Nile Project on SoundCloud

“The Nile Project was founded in August 2011 by Egyptian ethnomusicologist Mina Girgis and Ethiopian-American singer Meklit Hadero to address the Nile basin’s cultural and environmental challenges using an innovative approach that combines music, education and an enterprise platform.” – www.nileproject.org

From Tumblr with Love

Yes, it’s been a bit since I published an entry here at African Music Diary. While partly due to demands in other areas of life, I’ve also been spending time, as I get some, over at Tumblr. While you can see the latest of the AMD Tumblr feed at the .com flavor of AMD, I want to share with you a few new favorites I’ve found on Tumblr. Continue reading