Ethio-jazz

[1] The genre originated in the 1950s with Armenian refugees such as musician Nerses Nalbandian, who created a fusion of Ethiopian and Western music while working at the National Theatre.

The origin of Ethio-jazz can be traced to the 1950s with Nerses Nalbandian, a musician of Armenian descent whose family migrated to Ethiopia in 1915.

[4][5] He was born in 1943 in Jimma and developed an interest in music while studying aeronautical engineering in Wales.

[3] He went on to pursue a formal education in music at Holy Trinity College in London.

There, he successfully combined Ethiopian music with Western jazz and rhythms, conceiving "Ethio-jazz".