All posts tagged sierra leone

The WAYout Studio in Freetown, Sierra Leone, supported by the Strummerville Foundation, offers a facility for recording live music and electronic music that is free to street youth – one of the few studios with engineers trained in recording and mastering live instruments.

Sierra Leone is a country with a deep love and passion for music. Live music was a key part of its culture and heritage, and Sierra Leonean musicians would record using a range of local instruments, performing concerts across the country and recordings using live bands.

But this live music culture died down after the country’s decade long civil war. Following the war, many instruments had been destroyed and musicians increasingly turned to using digital equipment , computers and software to make music, with Western, electronic and other popular African influences becoming more prominent in the Salone sound. Now, there is less appetite, less training and very little capability and facilities to record with or using live instruments.

This style of electronic music changed the sound of most popular Sierra Leonean musicians, and is enormously popular with younger audiences in particular. However, some local musicians are working to reverse the trend and bring Sierra Leonean live music back to the fore. Alieu Turay AKA Zebulon from the group Asho Packer says “Live music is part of us and we should not frown away from it.” he said. They continue singing live music so that the future generation will learn from them, as it has been the tradition. “We should not allow it to die like that.”

The WAYout Studio offers a facility for recording live music and electronic music that is free to street youth – one of the few studios with engineers trained in recording and mastering live instruments.

Through opening up this accessible recording studio and media hub for disadvantaged Sierra Leoneans – live musicians and street youth alike – WAYout is working to both support a resurgence of live music in Sierra Leone whilst continuing to engage young disadvantaged street youth through a free studio to produce contemporary music-making, media and arts projects.

Earlier this year we embarked on a project to set up a recoding studio on behalf of WAYout project. We were lucky enough to have James Adams, a very talented multi-instrumentalist, who offered to head over to Freetown and set up the studio, train people how to use and maintain it.

We would like to share with you this a letter from James, in his own words:

“I wanted to let you know how much of a success this project was/is. With the equipment we sent out, we had just about the best studio in Freetown and people were coming from all over to check it out. Everyone was really impressed by the fact that we had live instruments and that we were able to record them.

It was incredible for me to see how much use was being had out of this studio….and how much it meant to people. The quality of sound production in general in Sierra Leone is so poor…most of the NGOs and government organisations source that kind of work from abroad. I started to see potential for these guys at WAYout to be able to pitch for this kind of work in the near future. Hazel went back out there recently and said they’re looking after and running it so well. They’re doing work for an organisation campaigning for peaceful elections and continue to record local artists. They still have a way to go with their knowledge to be able to pitch for work confidently….and they all need to develop musical understanding to produce and mix effectively. I hope to be able to go back out there and continue the work someday. Something really great has been started and there is a lot of buzz around the studio now.”

If you get a moment to have a look, James has put some of the recordings he made and pics to go with them up on his website – click here

We would like to offer a massive thank you to James and to everyone involved in this amazing project. Strummerville are very proud to have been involved and we can’t wait to hear more music from Freetown!

Strummerville x