Hailu Mergia

Hailu Mergia is an Ethiopian keyboardist, accordionist, composer, and arranger now based in Washington D.C., United States. He is known for his role in the Walias Band in the 1970s, one of the most significant groups in Ethiopia's "golden age" of music.

Biography

Early life Hailu Mergia was born in 1946 in Debre Birhan, Shewa, Amhara and moved to Addis Ababa at age 10. He grew up on traditional Amhara songbook melodies, and taught himself the accordion at age 14. In 1952, when he was 14, he dropped out of high school and joined the army music department to support his family. He stayed for two years in the army, where he learned how to read and write music. Then, he became a freelance musician, touring around nightclubs in Ethiopia before meeting future members of the Walias Band at the venue Zula Club and leading the formation of the band.

Career Hailu's mastering of the accordion, as well as the keyboard and his talent for "re-purposing folk songs into funkier modern melodies," defined his contribution to popular music in Ethiopia.

Due to the Derg dictatorship, censorship was often a problem for the area's musicians, but Hailu acknowledged one way around censorship was to only create instrumentals. He later noted: "When you sing or write lyrics you have to support the government, and if you don't do that then you have a problem." Hailu recorded the album alone in a small studio belonging to an acquaintance that Hailu met at Howard University, where he had begun studying music.

He stopped performing in 1991 and opened a restaurant. a town in Eastern Ethiopia. Wede Harer Guzo became his most popular release yet, with the track "Anchin Kfu Ayinkash" reaching over 12 million streams as of 2025. In 2018, his first new record in over three decades, Lala Belu, was released on the same label, with Hailu accompanied by Mike Majkowski and Tony Buck. This was followed in 2020 by a full-band album, Yene Mircha.

2026 performances Mergia was announced as one of the artists set to perform in the second instalment of the Sound & Gravity festival in Chicago which is going to take place between 3rd and 6th September. His performance date will be on the 4th of September at Rockwell on the River.

Discography

Studio albums

Tezeta (1975) Tche Belew (1977) Wede Harer Guzo (1978) Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument (1985) Lala Belu (2018) Yene Mircha (2020)