Ethiopia's Jazz Master Flash: Hailu Mergia and "Lala Belu"

Today's upbeat song is by Ethiopian jazz musician Hailu Mergia. An accordionist who also plays keyboards, Mergia takes traditional Ethiopian songs and creates modern, funkier versions of them. During the 1970s, he was the keyboardist for The Walias Band, an Ethiopian western-influenced jazz and funk band. He and the band tended to create instrumentals as a way around Ethiopia's strict censorship laws at the time. During this time, he and The Walias Band recorded a seminal album of Ethiopian jazz instrumentals called Tche Belew. On a tour of the United States with the band in 1983, Mergia and other band musicians decided to stay in the US and he enrolled at Howard University. In 1985, while reacquainting himself with the accordion, he laid down 11 improvisational tracks on accordion, electric piano and synthesizer in a studio at Howard. The album was released in Ethiopia under the title Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument and was a hit, but wasn't released in the United States until 2013. He currently drives a cab in Washington, DC where he practices keyboard between customers. This song, Lala Belu, is from his new 2018 release of the same name.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walias_Band; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hailu_Mergia_%26_His_Classical_Instrument