Brighten The Corners Presents, in partnership with SPILL Festival, Ethiopian keyboardist, accordionist and bandleader Hailu Mergia on Friday 20th October 2023 at St Stephen’s Church. DJ set from Tom Greig.
discover more on the Spill festival programme here.
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Promoter: BTC presented in partnership with SPILL Festival
Time: 7.30pm - 11pm
Venue: St Stephen’s Church, Ipswich
Tickets: £17+bf
Supports: DJ Tom Greig
Age Restrictions: 14+ (14- 15s must be accompanied by an adult) -
In mid-1970s Ethiopia, as the political tides changed toward authoritarianism, Addis Ababa's cosmopolitan, soul-fuelled nightlife was in full swing.
Hailu Mergia and the Walias Band were the jazz pioneers at the very centre of this ‘golden age’ of Ethiopian popular music, providing the soundtrack to 12-hour all-nighters for the diplomats, power brokers, movie stars and regular club-goers seeking refuge from government-enforced curfews.
Now based in New York and in his sixth decade of musical activity, Hailu Mergia and his band come to Ipswich this October to tour their latest album, Yene Mircha (‘My Choice’ in Amharic). The record has been celebrated worldwide, including by the New York Times, BBC, and Pitchfork, who called it ‘triumphantly in the present’.
DJing and collecting music since the 1990s, Tom is adept at playing across a wide variety of musical styles. Taking inspiration from underground UK and US dance music and from outernational and African grooves, his versatile sets can take in house, techno, disco, boogie, dub, broken beat, jungle and jazz. Favouring deeper rhythms and lesser-known vinyl treasures, he is equally able to set off the dance floor with a party-starting blend when the time is right. The London-based DJ has played at Brilliant Corners, Spiritland and Soul City, is a regular at Hold Tight, Ipswich’s long-running under-the-radar dance institution, and has recently performed at the Woodbridge Ambient Music Festival. On his Mixcloud page he shares meticulously researched and programmed mixes that offer deep dives into a diverse range of genres including UK street soul, kwaito, digital highlife, jungle, modal jazz and ambient, as well as his dance sets from Hold Tight.