Compared to The Village Vanguard, The Blue Note was a bit embarrassing. Doors open two hours before showtime, giving guests ample time to meet their $20 minimum. Accordingly, we showed up with plenty of time to have dinner before the show. However, after we wriggled and hopscotched into seats at the claustrophobically crammed tables, we found out that the main dishes themselves – and even some appetizers – start at $20 and reach comfortably past the upper $30s. (As I write this and look on The Blue Note’s website to check my memory, I notice the online menu omits the prices.) With more than an hour until showtime, we decided Z and Coco would go out for food elsewhere in Greenwich Village and I would stay and have dinner there.

A few minutes before showtime, I went upstairs to the bathroom and stumbled upon a gift shop because of course they had a gift shop. On the way back to my seat, I overheard a conversation at the till. Your total is $75. After a short silence, during which, I presume, the customer looked down at the two items on the counter, blinked, and looked back up: How much is each item?

At least the show was good. The drummer, who apparently tours with Alicia Keys, was amazing. Gleefully he battered the kit with urgency unabating as if he were Tom and the groove Jerry. Between songs, Terrace took his time telling stories and teasing his bandmates. Halfway through the set, he announced his guest, whose name might not ring many bells, but has been inscribed on several Grammies for cowriting hits like Bruno Mars’s That’s What I Like and Justin Timberlake’s Pusher Love Girl. For two people in the audience the name rang not a bell but a gong, and when Terrace hesitated during the introduction, one of them cried out The GOAT! Terrace nodded and confirmed, the GOAT… James Fauntleroy! Out shuffled a man befitting his all-but-pop-star status: a short, chubby man wearing thick-framed glasses, a hawaiian shirt, and striped jogging pants.

I first read about Hailu Mergia in Pitchfork’s The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s, which listed his 2018 album Lala Belu at 185th. But my favorite Hailu album quickly became and has remained his 1978 album, Wede Harer Guzo. It’s that rare and precious kind of music that’s somehow nostalgic on first listen. I adore even the album cover, which is a scan of the original tape cover art set against a solid magenta background. Late 2019 and early 2020 was a fertile time of music discovery for me.

It’s been five years and I still listen to Hailu routinely, and so does my friend Isaac, who was my roommate at the time and is Ethiopian like Hailu. So, in January, when Isaac got a Spotify notification that Hailu was playing a concert in Seattle in March, we bought tickets instantly. Soon afterwards, it sold out.

We showed up close to scheduled showtime, but Hailu and his bandmates didn’t for another hour, almost two. On “Habesha Time,” as Isaac anticipated of his fellow Ethiopians. Nonetheless, the crowd roared as the band came on stage.

From the first song, I thought the music sounded spare, like an instrument was missing. So much so, that by the end of the second song, I felt let down. It wasn’t sounding like I expected. And yet the rest of the crowd was thrilled. I wondered if we should move away from the stage to a place in the venue where the speakers translated better. Maybe our position under them was deceiving us.

But by the third or fourth song, Isaac and I realized we were thinking the same thing. Something was wrong. In the middle of a song we saw Hailu turn a keyboard knob left and right with a puzzled look like one would if the volume wasn’t working. The other two band members, the bassist and the drummer, seemed to sense something too. The three of them exchanged looks but did not betray much worry. When the song ended, the crowd clapped and whooed enthusiastically. I waited for Hailu to say something to someone about the keyboard. He didn’t. They went on to the next song.

We were standing a few feet to Hailu’s left, in the perfect position to watch his left hand play mute accompaniment. We could hear every note he played with his right hand on the upper keyboard, and even some of the notes he played on the right half of the faulty keyboard, but almost nothing from the left hand as it pressed futile chords into the left half.

After the fifth or sixth song, I approached an employee standing security next to the stage to tell him. He leaned in and listened to me and nodded without looking up. I stepped back to my spot and waited. He leaned and said something to the other employee standing by the stage. Neither seemed bothered. When the song ended, they just stood there and clapped.

Then I noticed a guy in front of me and Isaac shifting and glancing restlessly at the two employees and conferring with his friends about something. I figured he must have noticed too. At the end of the next song, I leaned forward and asked him, trying to speak over the noise of the crowd. It’s ridiculous! he said to me immediately. After a moment I realized he was talking about the huge fan at the end of the corridor blowing air into the venue from outside. He was just cold.

Isaac needed to go to the bathroom and I still held out hope that the music would sound better farther from the stage, so we waded diagonally through the crowd towards the bar, listening as we went. We agreed. No difference.

Isaac went to the bathroom and I went to the merch table to see what albums they had. I commented to the woman working there about our suspicion that half of Hailu’s keyboard wasn’t working. She reacted with concern, but then said that her boyfriend was in charge of the sound and that he was a pro. I dropped the subject.

They were selling Lala Belu on vinyl but didn’t accept debit, credit, cash, or Venmo, so I spent the next several minutes downloading PayPal and trying to set it up. I stood aside and the woman continued selling copies of the record to people that came up. While I battled with multifactor authentication and her confusing instructions – no, you can’t do it that way because of the currency exchange – people kept coming up and buying records until there was only one left. Another guy came up wanting to buy the record. The woman looked between us, apologized, and said that whoever paid for it first could have it. I was on the brink of giving up but then I tried again, this time ignoring her instructions. It worked, finally.

With my new record in hand, I went with Isaac to the back of the venue to listen from a third vantage point, to see if the chords were audible from there. Nope. Still nothing.

Walking on a late evening on my own I passed a theatre I knew nothing about. I looked up what shows they had coming up and saw that Vieux Farka Touré was playing that week. I confirmed that he was the artist who had released a collaborative album with Khruangbin and mulled over buying tickets before realizing it was sold out.

While working the next day I listened to his KEXP live studio performance. It sounded great. On the day of the show, I called the theatre a couple times and managed to snag a couple tickets. Z and I went, and it was amazing. His band was the same as in the KEXP live performance: a bassist, a percussionist, and Vieux Farka Touré on guitar and vocals. All the instruments sounded great, especially the percussion and the guitar, but best of all was Vieux Farka Touré’s voice. I’ve since returned to Ali, his album with Khruangbin, and confirmed that it doesn’t do his voice justice. Live it was spellbinding.