Piano, organ, vibraphone and percussion form the instrumental foundation of ethio-jazz, a mixture of pop, modern jazz, traditional Ethiopian music, Latin American rhythms, Caribbean reggae and Afro-funk. Mulatu Astatke invented it. Jim Jarmusch rediscovered it. Hip-hop artists such as Nas, Damian Marley, Kanye West and Cut Chemist were inspired by it.

Mulatu Astatke is a composer and arranger. After developing his sound in the US with two highly influential releases in the mid-1960s, he spent much of the 1970s pushing the boundaries of Ethiopian music, collaborating both at home and abroad with artists such as Mahmoud Ahmed and Duke Ellington, and releasing critically acclaimed music on Amha Eshete's Amha Records.

In the mid-2000s, his popularity experienced a renaissance in the Western world after his music was used in Jim Jarmusch's film Broken Flowers. Hip-hop artists such as Nas, Damian Marley, Kanye West, Cut Chemist and Knaan have also sampled Astatke's songs extensively. Mulatu continued to develop creatively into the 2010s and has long collaborated with a range of artists including Boston group Either/Orchestra, London band Heliocentrics and Australian group Black Jesus Experience.