The sounds of West Africa flooding the Chicago scene

By Aaron Cohen
Special to the Tribune
Published June 25, 2006

A few weeks ago, singer Reuben Koroma and his band, The Refugee All Stars, opened an American tour in Martha's Vineyard. The next morning, he talked about his group's startling history and their hopes for their visit to Chicago's Old Town School Folk and Roots Festival July 9. All of the contrasts between where Koroma is from in post-civil war Sierra Leone and his quiet Massachusetts hotel room were too obvious to mention.

During the next month, Chicagoans will be able to hear Koroma's narratives as part of a West African live-music wave. Their vastly different sounds and stories attest to the region's diversity. A couple of hours before the Refugee All Stars' set up at the Folk and Roots Fest, Kekele will perform an acoustic guitar-driven dance music known as Congolese rumba on the same stage. On Thursday, the Malian pop stars Amadou and Mariam will help kick off the Music Without Borders Series at Millennium Park.

Other West African musicians who have performed in Chicago recently include the Malian Tuareg band Tinariwen, Senegalese luminary Youssou N'Dour, Cape Verdean morna singers Lura and Cesaria Evora and Congolese electronic trance group Konono No. 1 (who were scheduled to return this July but canceled because of visa problems).

Ken Braun, director of the American branch of record label Stern's Africa, is hopeful but uncertain if all of these visits signal a greater appreciation for West African music in the Midwest. His New Jersey-based company distributes African recordings throughout the country and runs its own label, which produces Kekele.

"It's hard to know when a real breakthrough will happen for any kind of African music in the U.S. in the way we've seen in Europe," Braun said. "Europeans were the colonialists in Africa, so there are some cultural obligations that have to be recognized, and there are many, many more African immigrants in Europe than the U.S."

Braun adds that there are, "so many varieties of African music, I hesitate to put them all together. There is something from Africa that would appeal to everyone if given the chance to hear it."

When Braun first heard the musicians who would form Kekele, he knew that they would find a receptive worldwide audience. Guitarist Papa Noel and its four lead vocalists were veterans of the classic rumba groups who flourished in Kinshasa during the 1960s and '70s, before corruption and violence ravaged the city.

Congolese rumba features beats borrowed from Cuban son and mambo records that were popular throughout West Africa from the 1930s through the '70s, but its songs are written and sung in Lingala. And, as Braun says, the language shapes the melodies. Kekele's recent disc, "Kinavana" (Stern's), reconnects with Latin America as it features guest arranger Nelson Hernandez from Venezuela. The overall spirit should resonate with audiences who followed the revival of classic Havana dances with the popularity of the Buena Vista Social Club in the late 1990s.

Cuban music has also been an inspiration for guitarist Amadou Bagayoko, who met and married the singer Mariam Doumbia while they were both attending a school for the blind in Mali during the late 1970s. But he adds that they had always listened to Ray Charles and Led Zeppelin via tapes that got copied and passed around among their friends. The duo's 1995 disc, "Dimanche A Bamako" (Nonesuch), features the pop song crafting and studio techniques of its Spanish producer, Manu Chao.

As Bagayoko says, the palpable Western pop and rock elements on "Dimanche A Bamako" have resonated among American audiences. The duo has performed in increasingly larger American halls since its first performance at Chicago's Summerdance in 2002. But when talking to the guitarist, he still sounds dazzled.

"Mariam and I always wanted to be famous," Bagayoko said. "But we never thought it would happen to this point."

For the Refugee All Stars, creating music was crucial for their survival. Koroma had been a successful performer in the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown until he and his wife, singer Efuah Grace, had to escape the country's horrifying civil war in 1997. They formed the group with other musicians who they met in Guinean refugee camps.

Most of the lyrics on the All Stars' disc, "Living Like A Refugee" (available via the Web site refugeeallstars.org) are about their struggles.

Surprisingly, some songs are also lighthearted. And they're joyously sung in a style that blends the sparse acoustic guitars of West African palm wine music with the beats and vocal harmonies of such 1960s Jamaican groups as the early incarnation of Bob Marley and The Wailers (Koroma's first band was named the Sierra Wailers). Koroma says this disposition is intentional.

"We started playing in the ghettoes, in the camps," Koroma said.

"In a refugee situation, there is no entertainment center and everyone is highly traumatized. We developed that objective to detraumatize people."

While the civil war ended and the group returned to Freetown in 1992, Koroma says that their song "Garbage to the Showglass" is a reminder of how much they've overcome.

"The refugee camp is the garbage," Koroma said. "We were taken from the garbage, to the showglass, which is America."

Being inside the showglass has also brought an unexpected reward. When the Refugee All Stars appeared in Miami last March to accompany a documentary about the band, one of the guests was Cedella Booker, Marley's mother.

"Meeting Cedella was a miracle," Koroma said.

"She was very nice to us, she appreciated our music and said that she would be the mother of the Refugee All Stars, too."