Keyboard and accordion luminary Hailu Mergia initially played with the Walias Band—an Ethiopian jazz-funk group that was wildly popular in their home country. When the group toured the US in 1981, they didn't find the success they'd hoped for. However, Mergia decided to stay and spent the next several decades working as a cab driver in Washington, DC. Luckily, he continued to write music in his spare time, telling the Guardian, “After I drop my customer, I grab my keyboard from the trunk and sit in the car and practice.” When his three '70s solo albums got a reissue through the Awesome Tapes from Africa label in 2013, a new generation of fans gave Mergia's musical career a second life. He will stop in Seattle to finally support his 2020 album, Yene Mircha. by Audrey Vann