Weekend America 2008.05.08 – Listening In on the Space Shuttle
Every morning on the Space Shuttle, a song is the first thing the astronauts hear. It is played by NASA Mission Control in Houston to rouse the astronauts from sleep. The songs are chosen for the astronauts by their friends and family, and played on days when they have a special job to do – like take a space walk or pilot a rendezvous with the International Space Station. In the next installment of our “Listening In” series, I checked in with some Shuttle astronauts (including Commander Steve Frick, pictured) to find out what they like to wake up to when they’re orbiting the Earth.
In this piece, we meet Mulatu Astatke, the father of Ethiopian jazz. A pioneering ‘global citizen,’ Astatke became in 1959 the first African to ever attend the famous Berkelee College of Music in Boston. He played with Duke Ellington in the 70s and has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the US since Jim Jarmusch featured his music in the soundtrack to the film, “Broken Flowers.” Astatke is famous in Ethiopia for modifying the traditional instrument, the krar, so it can play jazz scales. American bandleader Russ Gershon calls Astatke “a conduit,” who has brought modernism and jazz to Ethiopia while bringing Ethiopia’s extremely diverse tribal culture to the world stage. As part of his constant ebb and flow between the US and Addis, Astatke is now at Harvard for the year, where we talk with him about specific contributions he maintains Ethiopian culture has made to jazz as a whole.
