When Reuben Koroma sings the lyric “living like a rolling stone,” he is not
singing about the life of luxury and untold riches enjoyed by a certain iconic
band.
He is singing of a life of homeless exile, forced rootlessness, a barely
sustainable existence that he describes as “today you settle, tomorrow you
pack.”
He is also singing from personal experience, the result of what he described
as “a weapon conflict for the sake of power in which all lines of reason were
soon erased.”
Koroma spent years in exile, moving from refugee camp to refugee camp, in the
Republic of Guinea, Africa. A viciously bloody 10-year civil war in his small
homeland - Sierra Leone, on the west coast of Africa - left him and hundreds of
thousands of his countrymen, about a third of the country’s population,
“misplaced,” as he said in a recent phone interview from Sierra Leone.
“Today, I am very thankful to be one family and one home again,” he said.
“When I left my homeland, I thought, maybe it will be only a month. It turned
into many years. During that time, I learned that to be a refugee means you have
no brother, no country, no contact, no way to vote. I can now live a constant
life, civilized and again trustful, and it is because I found my voice in the
midst of such sadness and trouble. And from that came a mission to help all
people who, like me, were misplaced. I was blessed to be able to bring joy and
hope to those who had lost all such things.”
Koroma is the leader of Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, a group of fellow
refugee musicians who, like Koroma, lived in or around Freetown in Sierra Leone
before being forced to flee. The story of the group’s formation in the
Sembakounya refugee camp of Guinea, and its subsequent recording of a
much-heralded album, Living Like A Refugee, is the subject of the
documentary Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, the winner of 13 awards at
various national and international film festivals. It has been shown on PBS, and
is now available on DVD.
The film shows the horror that Koroma and his displaced countrymen faced. The
civil war in Sierra Leone began in 1991, initiated by the Revolutionary United
Front under leader Foday Sankoh, who wanted control of the country’s diamond
industry (the war is depicted in the film Blood Diamond). By 1998, Sierra
Leone was the poorest country in the world, and had become a hub for the drug
and arms trade.
Worse was the plight of the citizens. Community leaders were publicly
decapitated. Five thousand children, many as young as 12, were kidnapped, armed
and “recruited” into the rebel forces. Men and women were randomly killed.
Amputation of limbs - a form of psychological and physical torture inflicted as
a warning not to vote - was widespread. Women were raped and sexually maimed.
Young girls were turned into sex slaves.
“If there is hell on earth, then we have truly seen it,” Koroma said,
quietly. “No one is the same. This senseless cruelty, this torture, it touched
us all in some way. How could it not?
“But you know, anything that happen to a man, that is the destiny of that
man. God is great. And although at first I thought that everything was lost, he
showed me a way to be happy - and I am happy. And because I was happy, I brought
happiness to others. This gift of music that I found within myself became a way
to detraumatize people.”
The band was initially Koroma, his wife, Grace, and Francis “Franco” Lamgba.
As word spread, other musicians joined - some bearing the marks of maiming and
amputation. A set of drums was built. Some guitarists had fled with their
instruments; other instruments were provided by the United Nations Refugee
Agency.
The music of this ragtag band was and is a thing of marvel. It speaks to the
hardships and horror of the refugee life, tackling issues of senseless war,
displacement, social justice, corruption and loss, all the while managing to
find a way to turn extreme negatives into an unflinchingly positive voice of
hope, delivered from the heart and designed to transform and uplift spirits that
had been all but crushed.
“I am like my father in that I care more about others than I care about
myself; it is my nature,” Koroma said. “I was a musician, and the tool I had to
work with was music, so I know that people can find themselves in music. It no
create any psychological problem. It helped my people overcome their pain and
understand that there would come a time when they could overcome their problems.
“So I took the problems, the suffering, which I shared, and made songs that
speak for all of us, not just the people of Sierra Leone, but people all over
who have been misplaced and treated without justice. And we take them to the
various camps and play them, and people they shout and dance and laugh. When you
connect, all problems are forgotten.”
When the war was declared over in 2002, the members of Sierra Leone’s Refugee
All Stars played an important role in convincing refugees that it was OK to
return home. And the band’s album and ensuing documentary helped the world
understand the severity of what the residents of Sierra Leone had lived through,
the inner workings of the “blood” or “conflict” diamond trade, and the amazing
music that the All Stars make.
The music is an intoxicating, highly rhythmic fusion of native West African
music, Jamaican “one-drop” roots reggae, rap and - in its fervent
call-and-response singing and storytelling nature - gospel and Delta blues. It
is some of the most exuberant and life-affirming music ever recorded, a monsoon
of positive vibrations born from the darkest of storm clouds.
It is the sound of freedom, joy and camaraderie of the highest bond.
“When we start, we had to stand up and say our message with courage,” Koroma
said. “We had to bring people the inner strength to believe that we would get
back what we had all lost - and, to a large extent, that has come to pass. Some
wounds will only heal with time. But know we are again a nation filled with
hope, and I truly believe that the positive that come with music played a role
in helping to heal.”
He paused, and laughed softly. “I tell you this. I feel very proud. I was
walking today and I was approached by a young man, and he take my hand, with
tears in his eyes, and he thank me for what we do for Sierra Leone, that we can
feel safe, day and night, and for taking the story of the pride of our people to
the world.
“I tell him that we are just messengers. If people see us, and come away
feeling good, then we are making God happy, our countrymen happy, and,
hopefully, others with problems happy.
When Reuben Koroma sings the lyric “living like a rolling stone,” he is not
singing about the life of luxury and untold riches enjoyed by a certain iconic
band.
