The germination for what would become Mereba’s new album, The Breeze Grew a Fire, can be traced all the way back to before she was born, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In those halls, her father, who was studying journalism after emigrating from Ethiopia, ran into her mother, one of ten from a household in Milwaukee, who was studying accounting. They fell in love with each other and with academia. After getting married they both became professors. Mereba’s path was not in academics, though she did go to an HBCU, Spelman, in Atlanta. After graduating she signed to a major label, was part of the musical collective Spillage Village with JID, 6lack and others, and she had her music placed on the TV show Insecure. She said that she never had an inclination to teach through her music until this album, which is informed by her Ethiopian heritage.
“I was very intentional about wanting to include certain sounds from our country,” she tells me on Zoom from her home in LA. Through the album, she features the krar, an Ethiopian instrument akin to a guitar or banjo, and the masenqo, which is close to a fiddle. They weave into modern R&B beat patterns and textures on this album, at times almost imperceptive, but undeniably a part of the album’s DNA. They can be heard distinctly on a song like, “White Doves.” She said, “I wanted to bring those sounds to different audiences and show people how beautiful our sounds are.”
In the making of this album, Mereba had a very specific audience member in mind, who helped shape the sound: her newborn son. “He really gravitated towards our music. Especially towards Ethiopian jazz music.” She played him Mulatu Astatke and the legendary Éthiopiques series on France’s Buda Musique record label. But their favorite was Hailu Mergia & the Dahlak Band.
Mergia’s peak popularity in Ethiopia was during the reign of the Derg, which imposed curfews that banned citizens from the streets after midnight until 6 a.m. Not a problem for Mergia. His band started before sundown and played until daybreak when the curfew was lifted. Mergia’s music is propulsive and soaring, but also tranquil and contemplative. “I think there is a lot of our music that has that juxtaposition,” Mereba tells me. “It sounds soothing, but there is also this grit to it. And this underlying fire.”
The Breeze Grew a Fire has that juxtaposition, too. It can be bumped out of a stereo driving on a warm night in LA, but it is also imbued with generational wisdom. The only “feature” on the album comes from Mereba’s own late father at the end of the album’s stand-out track, “Wild Sky.”
“The audio is from the last time we all hung out as a family before he passed. It was almost like he was sharing his last words with us,” she said. At the time Mereba was living in LA, pursuing her dream, and the road was hard. She was torn between going back to Greensboro, North Carolina, where she could be by her dad, and LA. She may not have seen the path forward, but her father did. He insisted that she stay and persue her dream. He told her, “God will bless you abundantly if you put Him first and all the other things you are fighting for in this life second.”