Name: Hailu Mergia
Start: 2026-05-16T14:00:00
Location: Yerba Buena Gardens

Hailu Mergia

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival kicks off with a salsa dance party featuring the great New York sonero Hermán Olivera y Orquesta Taíno. At the center of NYC’s Latin music scene since the late 1970s, Olivera is known for keeping company with the greatest instrumentalists in salsa and Latin jazz. Among the many storied musicians he’s collaborated with are trombonist Jimmy Bosch, percussionist Manny Oquendo, bassist Andy González and pianist/composer Eddie Palmieri. Hailed as the sonero of the 21st century, Olivera and his hard-hitting Orquesta Taíno are leading practitioners of the salsa dura sound that coalesced at Fania Records. Bring your dancing shoes, because the opening act is also a powerhouse.

Season Opener: Hermán Olivera y Orquesta Taíno

Yerba Buena Gardens 

Aireene Espiritu creates music that embraces folks from all over. Born in the Philippines and raised in the Bay Area, she’s a veteran singer/songwriter who’s honed an extensive book of original songs combining Afro-Caribbean and African rhythms, American folk forms, bluegrass techniques and gospel music fervor. As a young musician she absorbed the sounds of Alan Lomax’s field recordings from the South, as well as her uncles’ Filipino folk guitar fingerpicking. Accompanying herself on guitar and ukulele, she gained widespread attention with her critically hailed 2016 tribute to the great R&B singer Sugar Pie DeSanto, Back Where I Belong (Little Village Foundation). She followed it up with A Color-Coded Symphony, an album and interactive musical experience designed to nurture curiosity and openness towards other cultures through music. She’s also part of The Sampaguitas, singing Filipino folk songs and originals in three-part harmonies. Her primary project, Aireene & The Itch, features a veteran cast of masters with Karl Sevareid on bass, Derrick “D’Mar” Martin on drums, Tony “Macaroni” Lufrano on keys and Bob Welsh on guitar. The group plays mostly Espiritu multi-genre originals, drawing on the blues, alt-country and roots influences from a third-culture Filipina-American.

Aireene & The Itch

In the 1970s, when Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa entered a musical golden age powered by a cadre of brilliant musicians combining traditional song forms with American jazz, funk and soul. Keyboardist Hailu Mergia’s Wallis Band was at the center of the action. Even repression by a military regime didn’t slow him down, as he pivoted to writing and playing instrumental pieces so that lyrics wouldn’t give the authorities a pretext for offense. But by the early 1990s Mergia had settled in Washington, D.C. and was no longer performing. His return to the stage in recent years is one of world music’s great stories, and his band is a creative force, delivering ancient melodies set to state-of-the-art Ethio-jazz grooves. Moving from keyboard to organ to accordion to melodica, Mergia deftly switches instruments—often during the same song. As he approaches 80, he seems indefatigable, extending his legacy with intoxicating performances.

The pandemic spawned many unlikely musical connections, but the story of Larry & Joe continues to resonate long after lockdown lifted. Larry Bellorín hails from Monagas, Venezuela and is a legend of música llanera, the celebratory harp-driven national music and dance of the South American nation. Joe Troop grew up in North Carolina’s Piedmont and is a Grammy-nominated bluegrass and oldtime musician. When Larry was forced into exile he sought asylum in North Carolina. Meanwhile, Joe, after a decade in Buenos Aires leading the Latingrass quartet Che Apalache, got stranded back in his North Carolina stomping grounds by the pandemic. Larry worked construction to make ends meet and Joe turned his attention to working with asylum-seeking migrants. It seems they were destined to meet. A musical friendship was quickly struck and they’ve been inseparable musical partners ever since. Currently based in the Triangle of North Carolina, both men are versatile multi-instrumentalists and singer-songwriters on a mission to show that music has no borders. Performing a fusion of Venezuelan and Appalachian folk music on harp, banjo, cuatro, fiddle, maracas, guitar, upright bass and whatever else they decide to throw in the van, the duo creates a singular blend of their musical inheritances, punctuated by storytelling about the ways that music and social movements coalesce.

Larry & Joe

Blending the percussive Afro-Mexican tradition of son jarocho with electronic beats and cogent rhymes, Las Cafeteras have earned a global following with their infectious live performances. Emerging from an East Los Angeles community center in the mid-aughts, the group has taken their electric sound around the world, from Bonnaroo and the Hollywood Bowl to WOMAD New Zealand and the Montreal Jazz International Jazz Festival. Modern day troubadours dedicated to remixing Mexican roots music with lyrics that document stories of a community seeking to “build a world where many worlds fit,” Las Cafeteras have honed an encompassing sound infusing soul, rock and hip-hop into Afro-Mexican grooves. Busy at work on a multimedia production celebrating the legacy of Chicano rocker Ritchie Valens, Las Cafeteras honor the past by deploying traditional instrumentation like the 8-string jarana, 4-string requinto, donkey-jawbone quijada shaker and wooden platform tarima for percussive footwork. Determined to reach all audiences, Las Cafeteras sings in five distinct languages: English, Spanish, Spanglish, love and justice.

Las Cafeteras

One voice can change the world, but when people sing together they transform themselves. Singers from the Community Music Center Openhouse LGBTQ+ Choir, directed by Zahra Rothschild, and CMC 30th Street Choir, directed by Martha Rodriquez Salazar, perform popular and folkloric music from the Americas with the accompaniment of pianist Jennifer Peringer and other musicians. The CMC Choirs are part of a tuition-free Neighborhood Choir Program for Older Adults composed of 17 choirs at neighborhood and senior centers throughout San Francisco. The Community Music Center is a non-profit institution making high-quality music accessible to people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities, regardless of financial means. With a newly expanded campus in the Mission and along with the Richmond center , CMC students come from every neighborhood to learn and make beautiful music!

Community Music Center Neighborhood Choirs

The Manilatown Ancestral Ensemble presents the pre-colonial music, dance and attire traditions of Mindanao, Southern Philippines and Kalinga, Northern Philippines. All trained in the traditional manner by indigenous Philippine culture bearers, the Manilatown musicians and dancers take pride in introducing young people to the joyful and unifying power of tribal Philippine polyrhythmic percussion music, song and dance.

Manilatown Ancestral Ensemble (Kids’ Show)

Yerba Buena Gardens

For nearly five decades Gamelan Sekar Jaya has set the standard for Balinese music and dance in North America. The only foreign group ever awarded the Dharma Kusuma, Bali’s highest honor for artistic achievement, the Berkeley-based company is credited with helping spark a cultural renaissance in Indonesia that continues today. Commissioning leading Balinese composers and choreographers and collaborating with Bay Area artists across an extravagant array of disciplines, GSJ gracefully navigates a twofold path marked by both reverence for tradition and creative innovation. Returning to the Gardens, GSJ brings a varied program that includes western Balinese jegog, an ensemble directed by local Balinese artist I Gede Artha Negara. Rarely heard outside of Indonesia, it’s a loud, fast, and precisely rhythmic tradition performed on bamboo instruments. GSJ also presents the bronze-keyed, metallophone-powered gong kebyar, the most prevalent type of orchestra in Bali, directed by Balinese guest music director I Bagus Made Widnyana. Tightly coordinated to represent an ideal of perfect unity with every gesture, nuance, expression, phrase and rhythmic change, GSJ dancers accompany the gong kebyar, directed by Balinese guest dance director Ida Ayu Wayan Arya Satyani.

Gamelan Sekar Jaya

An uproarious variety show manifesting the fabulous creative diversity of queer artistic expression, Pride in Yerba Buena! celebrates San Francisco’s LGBTQIA community with the best in drag, circus arts and music. With drag king Tyson Check-In serving as host and headliner joined by drag queen and the current San Francisco Drag Laureate Per Sia, the afternoon is filled with thrills, quips and zingers. Performers include aerialists Vix Nolan and Joey Tiger, juggler Lucy, drag queen and vocalist Malitia Scunt and Puerto Rican drag prince Tito Soto, who co-produces the weekly drag showcase Princess at SF Oasis, among many others.

Pride in Yerba Buena!

Some sounds could only emerge in San Francisco, like the Arabic psychedelic rock of Camellia Boutros. A first-generation Lebanese-Palestinian composer and multi-instrumentalist, she spent years performing on trumpet, oud and bass in Arab, Balkan and Mexican combos. Eventually she developed a fretless 12-string electric oud-guitar as a vehicle for composing her own brand of experimental Arab rock. Writing music rooted in Arabic scales (known as Maqam) and San Francisco rock, she’s captured her experience growing up between California and the Levant with her highly personal blend of psychedelia, folk, jazz and hip-hop. When she’s not fronting her own band, Boutrous can be found performing with the percussion and brass-powered Mission Delirium, the Romany-inspired Balkan brass band Inspector Gadje, the all-femme son jarocho and Arabic folk musical project Corazón de Cedro and with Mexican-born rapper Chhoti Maa. For this afternoon’s show she’s joined by drummer Michael Morales, electric bassist Sean Spangenberg and tenor saxophonist Michael Booker.

Camellia Boutros

Co-founded by Oakland stand-up comic Jackie Keliiaa, the smash hit, all-Native comedy revue Good Medicine has sold-out venues around the country, including A.C.T’s Strand Theater. More than a comedy showcase, Good Medicine lives up to its billing, cultivating joy and community while transforming clichéd narratives about Native life. “You won’t find any stoic Hollywood tropes in these sets,” says Keliiaa, who was raised in Hayward and draws inspiration and material from her Native American, Native Hawaiian, Portuguese and Italian heritage. “These comedians are using humor to define Native identity in our own words and on our own terms.” Don’t miss the latest edition of this nationally acclaimed tour featuring the best and brightest Native comedians from across North America.

Good Medicine

Led by New Orleans-native Michelle Jacques, a soul-steeped vocalist with a big, bold voice, Chelle! & Friends bring to the Gardens a family-friendly taste of the Crescent City, the cradle of so much essential American music. Chelle! & Friends is made up of some of the most distinguished and accomplished musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Rhonda Crane and Bryan Dyer on vocals and percussion, Donna Viscuso on saxophone, Eric Swinderman on guitar, Kevin Scott on bass and Michaelle Goerlitz on drums. Chelle! & Friends deliver music that’s steeped in the cadences of gospel and animated by the earthy grooves of R&B and the Caribbean. Join the party, move your feet, sing along and join a Mardi Gras parade!