Word: fisher
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...sign out front. Inside, the walls are lined with a velveteen fabric, the floor is covered in shag carpeting and there's minimal sound equipment - just a dated computer, two keyboards, a microphone and a mixing desk. The men are recording a track called "One Love," as King Fisher, the studio's founder and father figure to all the musicians who pass through it, sits at the computer. The vocalist sings, "Somebody help me/ Somebody tell me/ Why we keep on fighting?" When the chorus comes along, the whole group joins in, dancing around the small room and singing...
...Thankfully, there are people like Body Guard Studio's King Fisher, whose real name is Emrys Savage, working toward peace - and doing it with music. "When you go to a club and the music says, 'Go down, go down,' people go down," says Aruna Hakim Dumbuya, a.k.a. Wahid, one of the musicians at Body Guard on the rainy Saturday. "And when the music says, 'Come up,' they come up. If you say 'Make peace,' people will make peace...
...Fisher's politics, and guidance, appeal to all the young men who go to Body Guard. None were left untouched by the civil war and all appreciate the studio as an outlet. During the fighting, says Fisher, "all the progress young people should have been making they couldn't because nothing was working...
...Shine Da God Son, one of Fisher's protégés, was one such young person. When Fisher met Shine (real name Abdul Malakhi Kamara), he wanted to be a musician, but also a gangster. He had lost his father during the war, and was hanging out with a bad crowd who settled their problems with violence. "You can't work with me with that kind of attitude," Fisher told him. Shine cleaned up his act and has since produced three albums with several hit songs - including one called "No More Beatin', No More Dissin'" - and is working...
Shine talks too quickly, as if he's the only person in West Africa who is in a hurry. He wants to be famous - but he also wants more. He wants to see Sierra Leone move toward peace and development. Fisher believes the path to reconciliation is for young men like Shine to lay down their weapons and pick up microphones. "Even [during the war] the rebels put down their guns when the music came on," he says. "The military and the rebels danced together, and when they're dancing, they don't have to fight...