Hailu Mergia

Hailu Mergia, an inventive Ethiopian musician adept on keyboards and accordion who also led groups, first attracted notice in the opening years of the 1970s as leader of the Walias Band. That instrumental funk-and-jazz unit served as a regular attraction on Addis Ababa’s hotel circuit. After relocating to the United States at the beginning of the 1980s, he produced several self-recorded solo projects while earning a living behind the wheel of a taxi. Rediscovery arrived when the Awesome Tapes from Africa label reissued material in the 2010s, igniting a strong late-career revival capped by the 2018 studio album Lala Belu.

During his initial professional period, Mergia and the Walias Band accompanied leading vocalists and staged marathon club engagements that fused hard funk, local traditional music, and jazz. The musicians routinely performed through the night in Ethiopia’s capital to accommodate audiences subject to the revolutionary government’s early curfew. In 1981 the ensemble became the first modern Ethiopian act to tour the United States. Although broad commercial breakthrough remained out of reach, Mergia and several colleagues chose to stay in America rather than return to Ethiopia under its authoritarian regime.

He established himself in Washington, D.C., working as a cab driver and occasionally running through scales between fares on a portable keyboard kept in the trunk. Over the ensuing decade he appeared in occasional performances and cut a series of homemade solo cassettes that merged jazzy accordion and analog-synth lines with electric piano and vintage drum-machine rhythms. One of those tapes, the 1985 cassette Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument, came to the attention of Brian Shimkovitz, whose archival imprint Awesome Tapes from Africa reissued it in 2013. Subsequent years brought further Walias and Mergia reissues from the label, generating international touring and the formation of a new Mergia solo band. In 2018, supported by a nimble jazz trio, he confirmed his return with the studio album Lala Belu, which reached the Top 20 on Billboard’s Jazz Albums chart. The resurgence continued in 2020 with the trio release Yene Mircha. In 2021 the long-sought 1975 cassette-only debut Tezeta, recorded with the Walias Band, finally appeared in reissued form.