Word: sierras
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Just a few years ago, five young men in a room in Sierra Leone would have meant trouble. It was men in their teens and their 20s - but also, tragically, children even younger - who made up the Revolutionary United Front, a ragtag armed militia supported by Liberia's President Charles Taylor (now on trial for war crimes at the Hague) that devastated the country during an 11-year civil war that ended in 2002. Everywhere they went they left a calling card of chopped-off limbs, raped women and senseless bloodshed. Tens of thousands were killed and a third...
...recovery. Although the war is over, many of the problems associated with it are not. Ex-combatants, a large number of whom were forced to fight against their will, have not been fully reintegrated into society or accepted by their families. The extreme poverty and frequent conflict that made Sierra Leone susceptible to fighting remain. Communities still remember individual wrongdoings, and true reconciliation - somewhere between forgiving and forgetting - has not yet been achieved. (See pictures of death and life in Sierra Leone...
...Sierra Leone has always had a very strong musical tradition. It was one of the first places Western explorers and traders landed in the region in the middle of the 15th century and quickly became an outpost for Portuguese and Italian contingents. Later, the British sent freed slaves captured in transit to Sierra Leone. The variety of influences - from different parts of Africa and Europe - created a unique Sierra Leonean sound. (Read "Hollywood Plays Rough with Diamonds...
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...
...Fisher says Sierra Leoneans need to forgive each other and hold the people who caused the most harm accountable. Many of the songs that come out of the two small rooms at Body Guard Studio are about corruption and greedy politicians - some of the biggest obstacles to true development. In Freetown, there are signs of progress. The city has a relatively functional municipal electricity grid, cheap and easy public transportation, and a budding democratic government. But, as the song "One Love" recognizes, Sierra Leone still has a long way to go before the animosity that enabled war to sweep over...