At 81, Mulatu Astatke is still the coolest person we’ll never be. Mulatu Plays Mulatu is essentially the godfather of Ethio-jazz, fine-tuning himself—not because he needed to, but because he could. After a decade away from the studio, he’s back reimagining his greatest works with the swagger of someone who invented a genre and knows it.

“Ethio-jazz brings us together and makes us one,” explains Mulatu. “This album is the culmination of my work bringing this music to the world and pays respect to our unsung heroes, the original musical scientists in Ethiopia who gave us our cultural music.”

This album is like watching a master chef revisit their signature dishes with better ingredients and a Michelin-starred budget. Recorded between London and Addis Ababa, he has assembled some heavyweight collaborators, including Carlos Niño, Tom Skinner, Dexter Story, Kibrom Birhane, and more, to stretch these classic tunes into extended, hypnotic grooves. The vibraphone still sounds impossibly chill, the horns still slither like smoke, and the rhythms hit that sweet spot between big band sophistication and ancient pentatonic mysticism.

Ethio-jazz classics like ‘Yekermo Sew’ get the eight-minute treatment they always deserved, while ‘Yekatit’ brings funk enough to make your hips shimmy and shake. It’s mature without being nostalgic, reverent without being precious. Basically, Mulatu took songs that were already brilliant and said, “Yeah, but what if I made them better?” The answer is this: an hour of proof that some people age like wine soaked in Ethiopian honey.