It’s midnight or so, and my friends and I are dancing in a hotel lobby in West Texas. It’s an idiosyncratic place any time of day—the kind of hotel that’ll put you up in a tent or Airstream trailer, the kind of lobby that’ll sell you sage bundles alongside fancy art books and $80 hoodies that say “See Mystery Lights”—and a particularly odd place for a late night dance party. With the couches pushed to the wall, 30 or 40 of us can squeeze onto the makeshift dance floor, tops. I’m wearing a wig—a pink bob—for no reason that matters.
A short walk away, it’s an empty night in an endless desert. But inside that lobby, we’re in a perfect moment, sharing a preposterous bliss that, clearly, I’m still compelled to write about years later. And all of this, all of the lasting bliss, springs directly from the joy and the music of the 75 year old Ethiopian man playing keys that night: Hailu Mergia, whose “Lala Belu” is Track 5 of 2018’s New Masculinities Playlist.
Whenever I write these essays, whenever I seek out songs and artists to add to the New Masculinities Playlist, heck whenever I scour the music world for any new inspiration whatsoever, there’s a simple question bubbling in my guts and in my heart: What does it feel like? What does it—the song—feel like, in my feet, in my chest, in my “soul”? Sure, yes, that’s the easy part. But even more importantly: What does it—the feeling—feel like? The feeling that inspires and drives the song, the feeling that ignites the artist’s performance.
You rockin’ that too-cool indie rock dude aloofness, obscuring any discernable feeling or sincerity whatsoever? Meh, no thanks. You pouring your pain and yearning and hope into every note? Yeah, that’s the good stuff. That’s the kind of music, the kind of artistry, the kind of art that can stitch our hearts together—even across decades, even across continents—and keep us showing up for our tomorrows when we otherwise might not.
Hailu Mergia’s music and Hailu Mergia’s story are one and the same. A onetime jazz pioneer and minor music star in his native Ethiopia, Mergia was forced out of his homeland by the broad effects of civil war, and settled in Washington, DC, where he drove a taxi for the better part of 30 years. In 2013, Mergia’s music and story came to the attention of the founder of the Awesome Tapes From Africa record label, who then partnered with Mergia to re-release his music and get him touring again.
Those are the facts, which have been recounted elsewhere by better writers than me. What we’re concerned with here is the feeling. And that’s the incredible thing about Mergia’s music; all of the concomitant joys and losses and longing of the upheavals of his life saturate every note of his music. Listen to his band’s hit song from 1967 and you can feel the swagger and confidence of his uninhibited musical inventiveness. Listen to his home recordings from the 80s and 90s, amid those many years in DC, and you can feel his subdued spirit, his undeniable talent languishing around a metronomic drum machine loop.
But the story and the discography don’t end there. The collaboration with Awesome Tapes From Africa helped connect Mergia with a new band—an energetic drummer and double bass player—and the tour dates and re-released records not only brought Mergia’s music to broad new audiences, but also very evidently brought the joy back to the man.
This is the man who provided that perfect moment to my friends and me in the West Texas desert: rejuvenated by overdue appreciation, invigorated by fruitful collaboration, and channeling his feelings, as ever, directly into the keys. When Lala Belu arrived just a couple months ago—marking Mergia’s first recording in this new life chapter, including songs that he undoubtedly workshopped that Texas night—we greeted it as a precious document of that one fantastic night.
But that’s the absolute minimum thing to be said about this record. It represents so much more, not only for music fans but also for the man himself. Let it be, for you as it is for Mergia, a document of joy (as in the gleeful phonetic singing on the title track) and a document of gratitude (as in the stunning solo piano piece, “Yefikir Engurguro”). Let it be a reason to show up for tomorrow.
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Edited by Brett Goldberg
