Before setting foot in America, Hailu Mergia and the Walias Band had already spent a decade leading revolutionary Ethiopia’s nightclub scene. With raucous sets blending funk, traditional music, and prototypical Ethio-jazz, they played to upper-crust crowds in white tuxes and bowties, at hotels that swerved the country’s strict curfew with all-night lock-ins. But local acclaim left the Walias Band hungry, and in 1981, they plotted a U.S. tour to launch their courtship of discerning westerners. The shows promised much, but the audiences, discerning little, let them drift by; after a few more years’ touring, the group’s members were exhausted, their work unrecognized. Some went home, while others resigned themselves to quiet lives on American soil. Among them was Mergia, a keyboardist whose charisma, creative smarts, and fitful ambition had, by 1985, been made to fit in a silver taxicab, shuttling travellers to and from the airport in Washington, D.C. Anonymity suited him. When business was slow, he’d walk to his trunk, pull out a Yamaha keyboard, and slide into the backseat, where he’d skitter up and down Ethiopian scales over looping beat patterns. It wasn’t until 2013 that Hailu Mergia reissues began popping up in U.S. record stores. The first, Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument: Shemonmuanaye, was originally recorded in Washington in 1985, after the Walias Band’s dissolution. The work of a one-man band, this mirage of electric piano, mournful synth, pirouetting accordion, and repetitive drum machine felt accordingly dislocated and solitary, with unchanging tempos that felt like no tempo, a kind of astronomical drift. Its release sparked a wider rediscovery: Two livelier reissues from Mergia’s Ethiopia years followed via Awesome Tapes From Africa, along with the kind of international tour he’d been picturing when the Walias Band touched down three decades earlier. – Pitchfork

The Walias Band formed in the early 1970s in Addis Ababa where they were the house band for the upscale Hilton Hotel.  A civilian curfew made it dangerous for clientele visiting the hotel lounge to leave after 11:00 PM, and Walias would end up playing two or three sets until 6:00 AM the next day. In 1981 Walias became the first modern Ethiopian band to travel to the United States, playing on a tour with singer Mahmoud Ahmed primarily to audiences of Ethiopian refugees. Rather than returning to Ethiopia under its dictatorship, four members of Walias—Girma Bèyènè, Mogès Habté, Mèlakè Gèbrè and Hailu Mergia—stayed in the U.S. and formed a new group called Zula Band.^[3] Mergia took work in Washington DC driving a taxi cab, often practicing in his cab while waiting for fares at the airport, and released solo cassette tapes of traditional Ethiopian music played on analog synthesizer, electric piano and accordion. Meanwhile the members of Walias who returned to Ethiopia—Yohannes Tèkola and Tèmarè Harègou—continued to play together under the Derg dictatorship for another decade. – Wikipedia