Music that Heals Atrocity

...One time when there was no food distribution in the camp, Koroma wrote a protest song, and the band helped facilitate town hall meetings where people spoke out about issues they were dealing with in the camp...

...Things started changing when these two filmmakers met us in a refugee camp in 2002, took footage, interviewed us, and then brought the footage back to America and made it into a documentary film...

...We were like strangers in our own homeland...

...As Niles and White approached the dimly lit shack, they could hear a blend of traditional Western African and reggae music being played, and the lyric, "living like a refugee," being sung in English...

...Niles and White soon found out how the eleven members of the band had come together and decided to play music...

...It was at this particular camp where a dozen refugees met to form one of the only nontraditional musical bands in all of Guinea's refugee camps...

...People in the camps are so troubled," he says...

...Koroma mentions a woman in the camp who hardly spoke to anyone because she was still in shock after seeing the murder of her husband and two children...

...White contacted the Office of the U.N...

...When Koroma and the others returned to the camp, they held a meeting and answered questions from the crowd...

...After this tour was over, the band was asked by the United Nations to take a "go and see" trip back to Freetown, Sierra Leone...

...They would participate and even facilitate things in the camps almost as if they were politicians...

...Because we stayed there with them, it brought us closer to them and really helped to build trust," says Niles...

...He is currently developing a book based on interviews with Iraq War veterans...

...For White and Niles, perhaps their work has only begun...

...driver into driving them to a camp they hadn't planned on going to—the Sembakounya camp in the Guinean countryside...

...Niles recalls his first impression of hearing them play...

...They decided to just ask around the camp for musicians...

...They were singing songs about what life was like as a refugee or about what it is like to be a victim of war," says Niles...

...When I asked Koroma about this, he smiles proudly and tells me, "You know, people started to think of us as their advocate," adding, "It is the music that is advocating for them and they feel as if their grievances have been served...

...The band members not only helped other refugees heal their trauma through music, but they also acted as symbolic spokespeople and leaders for their fellow refugees...

...org) to help support refugee musicians around the world by supplying them with instruments and creating educational programming...

...White played percussion, Niles played guitar, Mun-yaneza was on the bass, and two Guinean guys joined them as well...

...They relax their minds, they laugh after every performance, and then they can talk...

...Arriving at these camps, they would set up their rusted sound system, grab their dilapidated guitars and cymbals made from tin and safety pins, and sing songs to massive crowds that gathered in the dusty fields—songs with titles like "Weapon Conflict," "Bull to the Weak," and "Compliments for the Peace...

...One day, Niles and White talked a U.N...

...So we thought of creating something that will at least minimize their trauma, and we found music as the right thing...

...No, this will not be forever, one day things will settle and we'll go back to our country...

...This transformative, almost therapeutic effect of their music for their fellow refugees has made a difference...

...Formerly, I was sleeping on stick beds...

...program is to allow refugees to go back to their home cities, and to see for themselves that the war is over, and then allow for them to return back to the camp and decide whether or not they want to return home...

...Niles and White made three production trips to Guinea and Sierra Leone over three years in order to complete the documentary...

...And little did they know that their first foray into filmmaking would end up transforming the lives of that film's subjects forever...

...They recognized in us, maybe even quicker than we recognized in them, what an incredible opportunity this whole thing was going to be," says White...

...Yet, what makes their music and their lives even more remarkable is that, despite these horrific experiences, their songs are utterly inspiring...

...The purpose of this U.N...

...It was with this concept in mind that Niles and Matt Pascarella is a freelance journalist and producer...

...During our initial meetings, Banker and I talked a lot about telling a story of modern Africa without shying away from realities, but also telling another side, a more in-depth human story than what you typically get," Niles says...

...The excitement shows in their smiles as White and Niles describe this project: "It is basically a collaboration with ex-combatant, war-weary teenage populations based in video production training...

...After the film was completed, it played at film festivals around the world (and on PBS's POV series...

...People in the camp thought she was crazy but, one day, when they started playing music, suddenly that woman got up and danced, and from then on she began interacting with people in the camp...

...Those who escaped fled to neighboring Guinea and eventually ended up at places like the Sembak-ounya Refugee Camp...

...They were more than entertainers," White says...

...Koroma explains why he decided to play music for fellow refugees in the camps...

...Arriving at West African refugee camps holding between 50,000 and 70,000 people, they would set up their instruments and borrow a PA system normally used to announce food distribution...

...Koroma tells me what he would say to his fellow refugees: "What we say to them is that all is not lost...

...There is still hope because we are living, and as long as you live you still have hope...

...Huge crowds of refugees turned out to see them perform...

...They stayed in the camp, with the band, and left only every three to four days to charge camera batteries...

...Niles and White introduced themselves and asked Reuben Koroma, the bandleader, what the name of their group was...

...After completing production on the film, they started a nonprofit called the Refugee All Stars Foundation (www.refugeeallstarsfoundation...

...Little did they know at the time that their idea would end up becoming a documentary (Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars) supported by some of the biggest names in the music industry, that it would win awards at prestigious film festivals around the world, and that people would one day refer to it as the next Buena Vista Social Club...

...Their songs describe a very real and honest portrait of what it is like to be brutalized by rebels, to flee your country, and then move from camp to camp in strange, distant lands...

...It is like the film was the door opener...

...There are some people in the refugee camp that hardly speak, hardly laugh due to what has happened to them," Koroma says...

...It created an awareness that there is a group living in Africa and because they did such a good job, and it is so compelling, people now want to see us everywhere...

...From its beginning, the "mission" of the band was to play music and entertain people in the camps by singing about their collective experiences as refugees of various conflicts, having no place to go, and remaining desperately afraid to return home even after the war is declared over...

...The band was then offered a record contract and has since toured internationally, appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CBS News Sunday Morning, and CNN...

...Many of Freetown's citizens who survived, including members of the Refugee All Stars, had limbs amputated by the rebels and were forced to watch as their families were brutally killed...

...So it seems as if music has been a healing power to them...

...It was a strange thing because the first time we went back to Freetown we saw that most of the places were destroyed and the routes were too bad," Koroma recalls...

...So after a few years of developing the idea, it began to crystallize that we wanted to tell a story about refugees in Western Africa and that we would use music as the vehicle to tell this human story...

...As Koroma points out, "Music reforms the lives of people somehow...

...While the civil war in Sierra Leone raged on for nearly a decade, it wasn't until the late '90s that the bloody conflict reached that nation's largest city and capital, Freetown, forcing thousands of people to flee for their lives as the Revolutionary United Front waged a brutal campaign to overthrow the government...

...While feasting on Red's $5 special—a double cheeseburger, French fries, and a Budweiser—musicians and first-time filmmakers Zach Niles and Banker White met here for months to hash out an idea they had for a documentary film...

...Before taking the stage at a nearly sold out performance of around 13,000 people at the Hollywood Bowl, Koroma tells me, "The documentary film made it for us...

...One man on a bicycle told them to follow him and he took them to the club-like place where the Refugee All Stars were playing further into the camp...

...Niles and White decided to extend their trip for another month to get to know the band and to do some filming...

...Koroma reassured people that the famous words of Sierra Leone's president were true: "War done, done...

...High Commissioner for Refugees' Alphonse Munyaneza, who was working in East Timor at the time, and together they came up with a two-fold idea: They would take a month touring refugee camps scattered across Western Africa playing music and entertaining refugees, but they would also try to find refugee musicians who could potentially be the subjects of their documentary...

...But when we started playing music we would see that people who came around and listened to us were really having some fun...

...Their latest work includes developing another project, a media center in Freetown...

...The Office ofthe U.N...

...They obtained finishing financing on the film by winning over powerful connections in the entertainment industry to support the documentary, including Shelley Lazar, Steve Bing, Joe Perry, Steven Tyler, Paul McCartney, Angelina Jolie, Ice Cube, and many others...

...I was sleeping on the grass roof," Koroma reminds me, "but now I am sleeping in a comfortable place and every member [of the band] has a nice place to live...

...It was like everything was upside down...

...Smiling, he told them, "We're the Refugee All Stars...

...If the documentary on the Refugee All Stars is any indication, their new projects may also change lives...

...High Commissioner for Refugees decided to sponsor the band on a tour of other refugee camps throughout Africa— similar to the tour that Niles and White themselves had already gone on while searching out the band...