page_title: Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument
section_title: Concept and instrumentation
hierarchical_section_title: Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument / Composition / Concept and instrumentation
caption_attribution_description: A black piano accordion with 37 tangents and 96 bass buttons (Stradella bass setup)
context_page_description: Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument, also known as Shemonmuanaye, is a 1985 studio album by Ethiopian jazz musician Hailu Mergia, formerly of the Walias Band. After the band split up in 1983, Mergia moved to the United States and began studying music at Howard University, during which time he discovered an accordion and began playing it. Initially intending to record a cassette of himself playing the accordion in a small studio belonging to an acquaintance at Howard, he also incorporated other instruments in the studio, such as a Rhodes piano and synthesiser.
  Using all three instruments and a drum machine, he recorded His Classical Instrument to showcase his mastery of the accordion, an instrument which reminded him of his youth – and which had lost popularity in Ethiopia since the 1950s – with the hopes of bringing it back to prominence. Via the inclusion of modern instruments, the album was also intended to mix the old accordion style with the modern technology of the United States.
context_section_description: Mergia set out to create an album which merged the music of his youth with modern music technology. For the album, he worked alone and used his accordion, a Rhodes piano, a drum machine, and, according to contrasting accounts, a Yamaha DX7 keyboard or Moog synthesiser (or both), and arranged a set of old Ethiopian songs with the mostly modern selection of instruments. Writer Donal Dineen wrote that the album was a "step into the unknown," given its fusion of a sound familiar to Mergia with "modern technology that was dramatically altering the musical landscape in the US." Via its dominance on the instruments he listened to and perfected in his younger days, Mergia intended for the album to be an exercise in nostalgia. Music critic Robert Christgau wrote that the album recaptures the modal melodies of Mergia's youth.
  The accordion is one of the dominant instruments on the album, and the "classical instrument" referred to in the title. The instrument had not featured in the majority of popular Ethiopian music for decades, given that it had been usurped by amplified instruments since the accordion's 1950s heyday. Mergia felt that many people in Ethiopia had fond memories of the accordion and the popular songs that featured it, and intended the album to bring the instrument to prominence again. Via the inclusion of the electric and electronic instruments though, it was assured the album would not be a mere throwback to the older accordion style. On the album, the accordion has been said to resemble the squeezeboxes of the 1950s, thus being consistent with the accordion music Mergia grew up with. Nonetheless, Australian news website ABC felt the album had the electric organ at its core, and noted its influence from the Ethiopian jazz scene from which Mergia originated.
caption: The album is dominated by the accordion and was intended to help raise the instrument's popularity in Ethiopia.
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