By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up
@bugsburnett
For years Rueben Koroma lived in refugee camps to escape the civil war that ravaged his home nation of Sierra Leone – ranked third-lowest country on the Human Development Index and eighth-lowest on the Human Poverty Index – from 1991 to 2002. Koroma fled north to Guinea in 1997.
But even there Koroma was scared. “I lost family members and all my property, and in the camps there was serious maltreatment from the Guinean military,” Koroma told me the last time he and his band performed in Montreal. “When we arrived we didn’t understand most of their languages. Sometimes we went two months without supplies.”
Worse, Human Rights Watch documented labour exploitation and rape in the camps, as well as the camps’ militarization as cross-border attacks increased. “We were all frustrated and angry and we all had bad thoughts. I needed to occupy my time and my mind somehow, so I started looking for musicians,” Koroma says. “We started singing in the camps. These people needed us. They needed entertainment.”
Then in 2002, Montreal musician Chris Velan and New York filmmaker Zach Niles discovered Koroma and his band – now called the Refugee All Stars – in one of the camps and chronicled their story in the hit 2005 documentary film Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars.
The band then moved back to their hometown of Freetown in 2004 and recorded their debut album, Living Like a Refugee. The SLRAS band has a rotating cast of members and play a variety of West African riddims, but are mostly guided by the deep grooves of roots reggae. Their lyrics are spirit-filled and uplifting. “I admire mostly Jimmy Cliff, Burning Spear and Bob Marley,” bandleader Koroma says.
After honing their chops on several successful international tours, the SLRAS band hired producer Steve Berlin (Angélique Kidjo) to record their 2010 sophomore album Rise & Shine in Freetown as well as in New Orleans. Young NOLA musical hotshot Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews’s solo on Global Threat is one of the meanest horn solos since Dean Fraser’s on Wake Up and Live (Bob Marley). “He listened to the song for a few days, then came into the studio and listened to it a couple more times and then just did it.”
Currently celebrating the 10th anniversary of their debut album, the band is cross-promoting their new album Libation – which saw them reunite with Montreal producer Chris Velan – on a new world tour that pitstops in Montreal on April 6.
With Sierre Leone’s civil war now over, the band’s decade-long journey has taken them from the squalor of refugee camps to the world’s biggest stages.
And yet Koroma – whose own parents did not survive the war – only wishes they could see their son not only survived but has done some good, raising money for the less fortunate in Sierre Leone and Haiti.
“If my parents could see me now I’d be the happiest man alive.”
The Sierre Leone’s Refugee All Stars
At Cabaret du Mile End (5240 Parc Ave.), April 6 at 8:30 p.m.
www.festivalnuitsdafrique.com
Tickets also available via the Admission Network at 1-855-790-1245 www.admission.com
Photo by Zach Smith, courtesy Les Productions Nuits d’Afrique
