Mastering and restoration by Jessica Thompson. The 1975 recording circulated only as a cassette inside Ethiopia and had never been pressed to vinyl before this 2021 issue, which is why the pressing year and the release year are so far apart.
Mergia and the Walias Band were at the front of the Addis Ababa scene in the 1970s, and his Moog playing is part of what made that sound travel. He spent much of the following decades driving a taxi in Washington DC.
The first record here by an artist from the Horn of Africa. Until now that thread ran through Herbie Mann’s Impressions of the Middle East — an American flutist on Atlantic — and nothing else.