Hailu Mergia

Walias Band to a Washington taxi

Hailu Mergia (ኃይሉ መርጊያ) was born in 1946 in Debre Birhan, Shewa, and played keyboards, accordion and melodica. He was a shepherd north of Addis Ababa, moved to the capital at about ten, taught himself accordion at 14 and, per Wikipedia, left high school to join the army music department for about two years. The Walias Band was founded in Addis Ababa in 1962 per DownBeat and the New York Times, with four friends; in the 1970s it played the Addis Ababa Hilton for a residency Wikipedia puts at about ten years, independent of the state with its own contracts and instruments, and backed singers such as Getachew Kassa and Alemayehu Borobor. In 1974 the Derg took power, with a curfew and a decline in nightlife. Walias Band's instrumental album Tche Belew came out in 1977 and Wede Harer Guzo with the Dahlak Band in 1978; on instrumentals and censorship he said when you sing or write lyrics you have to support the government.

The Walias Band toured the US in 1981, with a residency at the Ibex Club in Washington, and Mergia and several members stayed; the band split. He recorded a solo cassette in 1985, Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument: Shemonmuanaye, alone in a small studio, stopped playing professionally around 1991 and from 1998 drove a taxi around Dulles airport, playing a Yamaha keyboard from the back seat after airport runs. He studied at Northern Virginia Community College and Howard University. In 2012 or 2013 Brian Shimkovitz of Awesome Tapes From Africa found the Shemonmuanaye cassette in Bahir Dar and called him, reissuing it in 2013, followed by Tche Belew and Wede Harer Guzo; his first post-revival show was at Baby's All Right in Brooklyn in December 2013.

Lala Belu (February 23, 2018) was recorded in 2016, mostly at EMS4 in London, with the drummer Tony Buck and the bassist Mike Majkowski, mixed at Cue Recording Studios in Falls Church, and produced by Mergia. Metacritic scores it 81; Pitchfork's Jazz Monroe gave 8, AllMusic's Timothy Monger 4.5 stars, and it placed 185th on Pitchfork's 200 best albums of the 2010s. Yene Mircha followed on March 27, 2020, and Pioneer Works Swing (Live) on November 3, 2023, recorded on July 1, 2016. He played Pitchfork Music Festival and Woodsist in 2024 and Perth Festival in February 2025. Setlist.fm lists 82 setlists. Wede Harer Guzo's "Anchin Kfu Ayinkash" has over 12 million streams as of 2025, per Wikipedia.