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Refugees Magazine Issue 146 ("Iraq Bleeds: Millions displaced by conflict, persecution and violence") – Cinderellas of Reggae: The incredible story of the Refugee All Stars of Sierra Leone
Take a group of traumatized Sierra Leonean musicians from the refugee camps of Guinea at the turn of the century; add three tenacious young American film-makers who had never made a film before; blend these with a UNHCR staff member driven by a belief that music can both heal and publicize the plight of refugees; stir in a bunch of wild ideas, a succession of outrageous coincidences and a string of celebrity godmothers — and what do you end up with?
by Rupert Colville
Reuben Koroma found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time on 2 June 1997. When the decade-long war in Sierra Leone made one of its periodic lunges into the capital, Freetown, his world changed forever. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), led by the notorious Foday Sankoh had, together with a group of ex-army rebels, just toppled the civilian government of President Kabbah and was locked in a battle for possession of the international airport with the West African peacekeeping force ECOMOG.
When the fighting was over, ECOMOG forces mistook Reuben for a rebel and arrested him. "I was carrying dreadlocks. They thought I'd been in the bush for a long time," he told REFUGEES in a recent interview. In fact, he was a singer with a band called the Emperors.
Sierra Leone was in some ways the Iraq of its day. By the time the civil war ended in 2002, tens of thousands had been killed, and tens of thousands more had been raped or mutilated. It was one of the most savage, senseless wars of the late 20th century, fuelled by despair, greed and diamonds. However, it attracted a fraction of the attention of Iraq. What attention it has received has tended to come through the efforts of film and documentary directors – like Sorious Samura's searing documentary 'Cry Freetown' (2000), and more recently the Oscar-nominated film 'Blood Diamond.'
After he was freed, Reuben and his wife Efuah Grace decided it was too dangerous to stay any longer. Unable to reach their two small daughters, who were staying across the river in Freetown with Reuben's sister, they walked for two days until they reached Guinea.
The rainy season was in full swing, and the camps in Guinea were at their most depressing. "I thought there is no way for me to play music again. But I was thinking that I would one day form my own band, even in a refugee camp." For the time being, however, "it was just me and Grace singing at home sometimes."
A band is born
In February 1998, they were moved to a camp called Kalia where they met Francis John Langba – known as Franco – who had managed to bring his guitar with him into exile. "I knew him," said Reuben. "I used to see him playing in a band when I was a schoolboy. Myself, Franco, and my wife started playing. Just for fun. In the camp we were confined in one place. Nothing to do. Instead of sitting there for the rest of the day thinking about our problems, let's play music!"
In the autumn of 2000, the war spilled over into Guinea when the RUF and their allies launched a series of cross-border attacks from both Sierra Leone and Liberia. A UNHCR staff member, Mensah Kpognon, was killed and another kidnapped in September; and a second one was abducted in December. As a result, virtually all aid agencies withdrew for several months from the south-eastern part of Guinea, where some 200,000 Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugees were housed in a string of border camps – several of which were attacked by angry local residents, who blamed the refugees for the cross-border incursions.
Reuben remembers this difficult period all too well: "No UNHCR, no food, no medicine. Refugees had to get by by selling things." He and Grace sold their most valuable possession — a bicycle — but Franco hung on to his guitar.
In the spring of 2001, UNHCR was able to get back into the south east and began relocating the refugees from the lethal border region deeper inside Guinea. Reuben, Grace and Franco were moved to a new camp, Sembakounya, where they met Abdul Rahim Kamara (known as 'Arahim'), Mohammed Bangura ('Medo') and the 15-year-old rapper Alhaji Jeffrey Kamara ('Black Nature'). Together, they formed the Refugee All Stars.
All three new members had suffered appalling personal losses during the war in Sierra Leone.
Black Nature had been seized by RUF rebels when he was 11 years old, and had to watch as his father was burned to death inside his car. The boy was then taken by the rebels and forced to be a porter – child soldiers and slaves being another feature of this most vicious of wars. After a few months he escaped to Guinea. Impressed by his enthusiastic rap style, he was "adopted" by Reuben, Grace and the rest of the band.
Arahim, who plays the harmonica and was one of the band's original trio of backing vocalists, had his left arm hacked off at the shoulder. A very religious man, he remains philosophical about his experiences: "What they did to me is a fractional part of my body," he said. "So I take it as a destiny... Even the one that did that... I'll greet him. I'll forgive and forget."
Mohammed Bangura saw both his parents killed in front of him, and then – as if that wasn't bad enough – the rebels forced him to beat his own baby to death with the family's pestle and mortar. After that, they cut off his hand and tried to hack out one of his eyes with a machete. "They broke my heart," he says quietly at one point in the award-winning documentary that was subsequently made about the band.
Music was the medium that helped them all gradually pick up the pieces and start to look forward. "When I'm playing," said Arahim, "I forget about myself for the moment — what has happened to me."
Group leader Reuben Koroma's particular skill lies in his ability to describe the war and what it's like to be a refugee using an infectious upbeat rhythm — without it seeming incongruous.
"Telling a sad story through sad music would be boring," he told REFUGEES. "If you make it more in a happy mood, people will really learn from it... When we were in the refugee camps we tried to take our minds off the horrid things that happened. So we were playing to make ourselves happy."
The band started to make a name for themselves in the camps with their original mix of styles including reggae, rap and traditional Sierra Leonean 'goombay' music. "Later on, UNHCR saw we can be very useful to the community," says Reuben. "They introduced us to a French Canadian NGO, CECI, who provided us with two electric guitars, one amplifier, one mixer, two mikes, two speakers and one generator."
It was a defining moment for the band.
The film
In early 2002, Zach Niles (who had been working on the promotional side with Paul McCartney and Rolling Stones tours), and an old university friend called Banker White, were thinking about making a documentary about Africa: "something different — something that would bring the human side to the story." Gradually they had settled on the idea of making a film about refugees, and — since they were musicians — maybe about music as well.
They had never actually been to a refugee camp: "We didn't even know if people played music in refugee camps. So we just talked about it in this vague way for a long time."
Then, by chance, they heard about Alphonse Munyaneza, a UNHCR official who was thinking along similar lines. Alphonse was also a musician — and a refugee. He had left Rwanda for Belgium in 1991, and joined UNHCR shortly afterwards. A few years later, he set up the '4Refugees Artist Network' — essentially a network of refugees and others who would produce cultural events or activities — art, theatre, music, film, writing of various sorts — for the benefit of refugees.
Zach Niles contacted Alphonse – who was then stationed in East Timor. "I explained our idea of focusing on a refugee musician and how he uses music to help himself pull through," Niles recalled. "Alphonse wrote back and said 'I love it — this is perfect. I'll take some vacation and meet you in Guinea in two months.'
"Neither of us had made a film before," continued Niles. "It was just an idea. Alphonse kind of challenged us." So Niles and White went out and bought cameras and plane tickets, and also roped in a third university friend, a Canadian musician called Chris Velan.
On Alphonse's advice, they decided to approach the camps as musicians who had come to entertain and look for fellow musicians, rather than going straight in and saying they would shoot a documentary.
"We used the international language of Bob Marley," said Niles, with Chris Velan on vocals, and himself, Alphonse and Banker White on guitars and drums. "People were gathering around looking at this white Canadian guy belting out Bob Marley perfectly, and they got really excited about that." Refugees would get up and join in, and the foreigners worked as their backup band.
They came across many talented young reggae and rap singers, as well as a band of blind drummers. "In one camp we found this Liberian guy named Peewee who hadn't touched a guitar in three years," said Niles. "So we handed him one. He was phenomenal. You could just see it on his face, the emotion that he expressed that he was finally holding a guitar — and playing it. Nobody in the camp knew he was a guitar player."
But it was in Sembakounya – the fourth and last camp they visited – that they struck gold.
"We didn't even set up a concert," said Niles. "We just showed up unannounced on a Sunday and we found this guy on a bicycle... and we said 'Do you know any musicians here?' And he said 'Yeah, come follow me.' And so we followed him up this path to a hut." It was called 'The Place to Be Bar.'
"We'd found earlier on that nobody had guitars in any of the camps... And all of a sudden we heard this strumming coming from inside [the hut], and there were these guys sitting around with two or three guitars, playing harmonicas and singing – and the first song we heard them sing was 'Living Like A Refugee, it's not easy.'"
The three North Americans looked at each other in disbelief: "This song was so directly about their experiences, so directly saying this is who we are, this is what we are going through, and these are the difficulties we are facing — but doing it with this song that was so upbeat... And then when we asked them what their name was — they said: 'The Refugee All Stars'."
It was perfect — indeed it went beyond what they had been looking for: "Just the idea of Refugee All Stars — saying yeah, we're refugees, but you know we're Refugee All Stars, and putting this positive spin on it!"
With full logistical support from UNHCR, they took the band on a tour of the other refugee camps. The All Stars were not complaining. "As musicians, we like to see a crowd," remarked Reuben Koroma dryly.
After ten days — with some wonderful footage in the bag, but only the beginnings of a story — the three fledgling film-makers had to go home.
"We didn't have any funding for this project the first time around," said Zach Niles. "We did it just on credit cards and savings and that kind of thing. We went back home for about a year." Niles went on tour again with Paul McCartney to earn some money while Banker White edited an 11-minute trailer in an effort to raise funds to complete the documentary.
Reuben Koroma takes up the story: "In 2003, they wrote and asked what was the plan? We said we want to go to a studio [to make an album]. They offered Freetown. That was a very big problem... We really thought that it's very risky for us to go back to Freetown. We said 'Let's go to Ghana, to Ivory Coast.' But only Freetown was on offer."
Getting the band to go to their home country on a "go and see visit" had been Alphonse Munyaneza's idea. The war in Sierra Leone had finally ended in January 2002, and tens of thousands of refugees had already returned with or without UNHCR's assistance. But many, including the Refugee All Stars, were so scarred by their experiences, they could not believe it was safe to go back.
The negotiations took place on camera, and it shows how the film and the personal lives of the band and film-makers were becoming inextricably intertwined: "We are only going there because of you," Reuben says as the camera rolls. "We trust you."
The documentary follows their return and their reunion with family members and other musicians, including Reuben's old band, the Emperors, and its charismatic lead guitarist Ashade Pearce.
A recording studio was identified, and the All Stars and the Emperors — who henceforward fused into a more or less single, if somewhat fluid, entity — fulfilled their dream and cut their first album.
Finally, convinced the time was ripe for repatriation, the band returned to the camps in Guinea and spread the word to fellow refugees. Their participation in public meetings helped galvanize the process. "It had a huge impact," said Alphonse Munyaneza. "It was a good life decision for them and good operationally for UNHCR."
The band members themselves went home for good in February 2004 — all except Mohammed Bangura who, after the terrible things that had happened to him, still couldn't face Sierra Leone. He lingered on in Guinea until Reuben, Black Nature, Alphonse and others gently persuaded him to return home in the summer of 2006.
The repatriation gave the film-makers a natural conclusion to their story. They returned to the US with a total of some 400 hours of footage to edit. "It is the ultimate hand-to-mouth production," remarked Alphonse. "But they didn't come with Western eyes: top down, ignorant. They went about it in the right way."
Lift off
In 2005, at the American Film Institute's International Film Festival in Los Angeles, their remarkable film "Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars" won the prestigious Grand Jury Prize for best documentary, repaying the faith showed in it by an impressive list of backers that at various times has included Keith Richard, Paul McCartney, Angelina Jolie, producer Steve Bing, and Ice Cube. It has since gone on to receive a dozen more awards at festivals around the world.
And then a chance meeting occurred that would subsequently have a huge impact on the All Stars' career. Niles decided to screen the film in his home town in Vermont. "The screening starts and these two guys come in off the street — Steve Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, who had houses near by," said Niles. The famous rock stars watched the film, and stayed on for a Q and A session afterwards. Later, a couple of US$100 bills mysteriously showed up in the box containing the proceeds from T-shirt and CD sales outside the movie theatre.
The band's first US tour, paid for by Niles and White, took place in March 2006. To help arrange this, they approached a well-known booking and management agency called Rosebud, run by music industry veteran Mike Kappus, with a small but impressive list of artists such as the late John Lee Hooker, Charlie Watts, J.J. Cale and Booker T. Jones.
At one point on the tour, after performing at a major festival in Austin, Texas, the band decided to take to the streets to raise some money for Franco's upcoming wedding back in Sierra Leone. As they began playing on some hotel steps, a big crowd gathered and people started to dance — as people almost invariably do when they hear the music of Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars. As luck would have it, a music publishing executive happened to come past and stopped to watch. He spoke to Kappus, and a couple of hours later — around 1:00 a.m. — emailed him a draft deal.
That summer, Rosebud arranged a seven-week tour (35 performances in all) that included some major festivals in the US, Canada and Japan. For a band that still hadn't released an album in any of these countries, the tour was an extraordinary success. "Nobody gets into these prime events without a record," said Kappus. "It just doesn't happen."
It was also during this tour that the All Stars' extraordinary relationship with the American rock band Aerosmith took another step forward.
Lead guitarist Joe Perry had approached Niles offering to fund a performance by the band in their home town. "They hadn't a clue who he was," says Niles. "I had to explain that he was a rock-and-roll guitar legend." Later, Perry went up and played with them on stage.
He noticed that Ashade Pierce, a left-handed guitarist, was playing with a right-handed guitar and a few days later sent over a brand new left-handed six-string. "And then, throughout the tour," says Niles, "he kept supplying the band with other new instruments and equipment he felt they might need."
In the autumn of 2006, the band's album was officially released on the Anti record label, and they made their third major tour in six months. This time, they were invited to open a big Aerosmith concert at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut. It was here, for the first time, they really saw what it was like to be rock-and-roll superstars.
"It was a real fairy tale," said Alphonse Munyaneza, recalling how they drew up in a small battered van next to a line of gleaming buses, vans and stretch limousines.
Reuben Koroma and the rest of the All Stars were astonished when they were informed that all the vehicles belonged to Aerosmith. "Then we went backstage," he said, "where we saw about 100 people — and they were all working for Aerosmith! And there was food for everyone. Lots of food. And we were: WHAT? A musician employs over 100 people? That surprised us, really."
Before the concert, Perry, Tyler and the Refugee All Stars made a studio recording of John Lennon's song "Give Peace a Chance" for a charity compilation for Darfur; and later, Perry and the All Stars cut a version of U2's "Seconds" for a separate charity compilation of African artists performing U2 songs. Both recordings are due to be released in mid-2007.
Meanwhile, in between breaks back in Sierra Leone, the Refugee All Stars roadshow continues: in December 2006 both the band and the documentary featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and a month later the All Stars played two sessions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, as part of their commitment to promote UNHCR's ninemillion.org campaign on behalf of refugee children (see www.ninemillion.org).
A mini-tour of Australia is scheduled for April 2007, and Rosebud and the ever-enterprising film-makers have a number of other projects lined up for both band and film.
"Are we making money yet?" says Zach Niles, somewhat wearily. "We haven't paid ourselves a salary in two and a half years at this point. We'll do it differently next time: we should have got funding ahead of time, but sometimes when you feel so strongly about something you just go for it. Is there money coming in? Yes. Is it anywhere near the money that has been going out? No."
Same story for the band: "If it wasn't for the merchandise [i.e. T-shirts and CDs], we wouldn't be covering costs," says Rosebud's Kappus. But he doesn't regret becoming involved. "I've been in the music business for 38 years and it's unlike anything else I've dealt with."
But it is UNHCR's Alphonse Munyaneza, who has spent twelve years urging refugees to make music — and using music to promote refugee issues — who (while recalling the Aerosmith concert in Connecticut) puts his finger on perhaps the most interesting and valuable aspect of the whole Refugee All Stars experience:
"The band played for 30 minutes, the crowd got to its feet. After that, they showed a short clip from the documentary. There was sustained applause, before Aerosmith came on to play." He paused. "Then, at the end, Aerosmith again invited the crowd to applaud the All Stars. It gripped my throat.
"It had become cool to be a refugee."
The album 'Living Like A Refugee' can be bought on-line or via good music stores. To check on the latest news about the band, visit www.rosebudus.com and go to www.refugeeallstars.org to find out more about the documentary and taste the music.
Source: Refugees Magazine Issue 146: "Iraq Bleeds: Millions displaced by conflict, persecution and violence" (April 2007). Download the complete issue in pdf format: low-resolution (1.27 Mb) here or high-resolution (4.25 Mb) here.