Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #134 (February/March 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars and friends

Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars

by Jeffery R. Lindholm

Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars have one of the most perfectly descriptive band names in music. The music and the people in the All Stars are from the West African country of Sierra Leone. The original members met when they were refugees from a brutal civil war in the country, and now they most certainly are "all stars." Their buoyant yet defiant sound mixes traditional West African music, roots reggae, and rhythmic traditional folk.

In the past several years, the band members lived in a series of West African refugee camps; moved when the camps got too crowded or the fighting got too near; returned to their battle-ravaged home town of Freetown; cut an album; were the subjects of an award-winning documentary film, Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars; and appeared on concert stages on five continents.

This is a band with a mission. As bandleader Reuben M. Koroma said at the beginning of the film, "People who have problems, people who are frustrated, will be revived if they hear the greatness of the Refugee All Star band."

From 1991 to 2002, Sierra Leone was wracked by a bloody, brutal civil war. The rebels said they were fighting corruption in the government, but money from the country's diamond trade figured into the fighting, too. They regularly tortured, maimed, and killed civilians, cutting off arms and legs to prevent the men from being able to use weapons against them. But they also did it to instill fear, and the limbs of women and children were cut off, too.

Among the thousands who fled the fighting to live in camps in the countryside of neighboring Guinea were the people who would become the All Stars, but the musicians would probably never have become widely known had it not been for three Westerners. American documentary filmmakers Banker White and Zach Niles, along with Canadian singer/songwriter Chris Velan, were making a movie about life in the camps when, one night, they heard Koroma and some others singing. Two of the songs they recorded that night are included in both the movie and the album.

The filmmakers soon realized that the story of life in the camps could be told through these musicians, who had the spirit to make uplifting music in such an adverse setting. They followed the future All Stars for three years, through five different camps, as they played music to distract and inspire their fellow refugees, and finally were able to record their debut album, Living Like a Refugee, which was released on Anti- Records in 2006.

[cover #134]