Home »

THE REAL 'FUGEES FLEEING WAR, BAND SOUNDS HIGH NOTE

By BILLY HELLER

October 22, 2006 -- Rueben Koroma, the frontman for Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, recalls the death of a fellow musician. His name was Abubakar Kamara, a drummer in Koromam's trio, and he was 26.

"He died from the cold - the refugee camps were built in the forests, and it was always cold," says Koroma, who also lost his parents in Sierra Leone's brutal civil war, which has torn the West African country apart since 1991. His mother, he says, died "of swollen feet" when she undertook a long trek to flee the fighting.

The only thing Koroma gained from the conflict was his new group, which met in the refugee camps of neighboring Guinea. On Tuesday, six of the band's revolving-door lineup arrive in New York for a show at S.O.B.'s.

A musician since his teen years, Koroma's career in a Bob Marley cover band was cut short in 1997, when strife came to coastal Lungi, where he lived with his wife.

"I was arrested in our house," he says, then brought to a military encampment. There, he and other men waited while soldiers who suspected them of being rebels toyed with their guns.

Ghanaian peacekeepers intervened, but Koroma rushed home, knowing he had to leave at once.

"We took nothing," he says of his 35-mile walk to a town from which he sailed to Guinea. There he met other musicians, many with tales more harrowing than his.

Rebels amputated the arm of vocalist and harmonica player Arahim Rahim Kamara, who also saw them murder his father. Mohammed Bangura, a singer and percussionist, witnessed the deaths of his parents, wife and infant child. He escaped only after being tortured and having his hand cut off.

Released here last month, the band's debut album, "Living Like a Refugee," was partly recorded at Guinea's Simbakuyu camp. The title song speaks of the trials of a life lived under tarpaulins.

Despite the horrors they've survived, the sound of the Refugee All Stars' music is remarkably upbeat, a blend of reggae, West African music and calypso.

Koroma says that when they played for fellow refugees, "We make them feel happy. It helped minimize their troubles, because sometimes when you play music in front of people and people really concentrate on the music, the mind is taken away from their trouble."