Mulatu Astatke and his Ethiopian Quintet, Afro-Latin Soul (1966)

Where bought? This feels like I got it out of the huge box of £10 jazz records in Rise Records, Worcester. At some point in the vinyl revival I guess some people bought out the rights to loads of old jazz albums and re-pressed them, hence their latter-day proliferation and those 'jazz starter' deals you can get where they mail you about 10 albums for sixty quid.

The first time I put this on I really didn't like it. Oh I've bought a shit album is what I remember saying to myself in my galley kitchen in the little flat I rented above a hairdressers. I was probably doing the dishes at the time, which I seemed to do quite a lot considering i. I lived alone ii. I ate out a lot iii. I spent a lot of time in my office using the cups/spoons there.

Essentially it sounded like lift music. Bland, ponderous instrumental music whose pleasantness was sophorific and smothering. Not meant to really provoke or do anything other than soundtrack a faux-classy mise-en-scene. More to the point I was disappointed, because I'd gone deep into some of those Ethiopiques compilations and found them all incredible - especially some of the Astatke tracks.

This comes from the years after Astatke graduated Berklee and before he had returned home to pre-junta Ethiopia to change the course of African pop and jazz music. He plays with a quintet of Latino professionals, and the music does as the title suggests: vamping politely around some pentatonic modes with some jazzy flurries on vibraphone and marimba. 

I'm now listening three or more years later and I can see some sort of positive merit in it. The situation has changed: I'm overlooking a garden on a sunny day, my partner is happily reading a book in the afternoon light, and the music just seems to glide through the atmosphere. There's a restrained joy in the better parts of the music, and it goes down easy. 

I doubt this will ever become a go-to listen but I'm certainly more positively inclined toward it. Would I be sad to let it go to a more loving home? I don't think so. Let's give it a year or so and see.