His jazz and funk band, the Walias, performed for the domestic and international elite at the then-prestigious Hilton Hotel’s music club, which granted residencies to Ethiopia’s hottest bands. Crowds of dignitaries and foreign diplomats, Hollywood movie stars, famous musicians like Duke Ellington and Alice Coltrane , and important African figures like Manu Dibango would flock to the hotel to dance and jam until sunrise.

As a young man living in Addis Ababa during the swinging 60s, Hailu Mergia was a superstar. The Ethiopian capital city was a bustling cosmopolis where art and culture flourished amid the country’s uneasy quest for independence.

The Walias’s seminal album Tche Belew features the single “ Musicawi Silt ,” one of the most famous songs of all time in Ethiopia. It conveys messages of heroism through well-known references to Ethiopian battle songs. “Ethiopian music is like most art: in every piece there’s a message. Everyone is trying to explain what they know through music. Tche Belew is a hero’s song. It means ‘go for it,’” says Mergia.

Born in the Ethiopian countryside in 1946, Mergia spent much of his childhood working as a shepherd, but began learning to play music as a boy scout at age 14. When his band rose to prominence in the 60s and 70s, they weren’t just kings of Addis Ababa nightlife—they were a beacon to Ethiopia’s revolutionaries. Under the Derg regime , constant warfare, famine, and brutal political oppression plagued Ethiopia.

“When we played in the Hilton Hotel, the audience was full of people from around the world, so everybody had requests for different kinds of music. Sometimes we’d play Indian melodies, sometimes we’d play Arabic music. We’d pick up American soul, blues, and jazz melodies and then improvise on them in our own music,” Mergia remembers.

Left photo: First photo ever taken of the Walias band, Zoo Park in Addis Ababa, 1963. Center photo: Mergia and The Walias with Manu Dibango, The Hilton Hotel Ballroom, early 1960s

The album’s call for bravery proved apt. During the “Red Terror,” over a half million Ethiopians were killed and countless more displaced. The constant state of crisis led to the nation’s first major diaspora into the Western world, with the United States experiencing a surge in refugees.

In 1981, as his country entered one of the worst famines it had ever endured, Mergia made the painful decision to leave Ethiopia, abandoning his fame to move to the United States. He eventually settled in Washington, DC, where he’s been driving a cab for the last 20 years. “To give up fame and music was hard, but I always had a feeling that one day I’d make my way back to it again,” Mergia says.

Over the years in the States, Mergia managed to intermittently self-release a few tapes and CDs, but little of it reached his fans in Ethiopia. “Every once in a while someone in my cab sees my license and they know my name. Usually they have no idea I was famous,” he says.