The Ethio-jazz artist Mulatu Astatke will present a public talk titled “Ethiopian Contributions to the Development of World Music Instruments” at the Massachussettes Institute of Technology (MIT) on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008.

The conversation is a result of his recently completed Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University, where he researched how to develop the krarr (a traditional Ethiopian five-string instrument) electronically, wrote an opera based on Ethiopian Coptic Church music, and wrote a book on the historical context of instruments used in the Ethiopian Coptic Church music and their development of world music.

The talk comes at the end of a two-week artist-in-residence period at MIT. Thu 7:30 p.m.

Entrance: Free.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 10-250
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA
Tel: 617-253-2787.