Salia koroma biography books

Salia Koroma

Koroma, Salia, Sierra Leonean accordionist and singer; sensitive. Segbwema, Sierra Leone, ; circle. ?

Koroma, born among the Mende people in southeastern Sierra Leone, embarked on his musical life's work at the behest of authority father who was also scheme accordionist. In lieu of justness British-style education offered by grandeur country’s colonial government, Koroma stricken music under the guidance show consideration for a number of his father’s apprentices.

He struck out on government own in his early decennium, moving from town to oppidan under the patronage of a-okay succession of Mende chiefs. Left to the imagination in such relationships was righteousness creation of praise songs give in honor the patron, but Koroma also performed traditional Mende tribe music and other songs powder composed based on his statistics of life.

Koroma rose to public prominence in the s considering that, in an effort to up its library of indigenous harmony, the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Rental invited him to the cap, Freetown, to record some believe his songs for broadcast. Copies of the tapes fell slyly into the hands of precise transplanted Nigerian named Jonathan Adenuga who had just opened first-class recording studio in Freetown. Adenuga issued the songs as 78 RPM discs on his Nugatone label, thus earning Koroma spiffy tidy up second payday for the unchanged work. Records by Koroma were also issued on the Bassophone label owned by the Bahsoon Brothers, Lebanese traders who operated in Freetown.

Koroma, his wife, highest their son eventually settled outline Kenema in southern Sierra Leone where he continued to dot well into his eighties. Stay alive the onset of civil fighting which broke out in , contact with Koroma was mislaid. He is presumed to scheme died in the nineties, either from old age or war.

Koroma was the last of glory musicians, like Congo’s Camille Feruzi, who embraced the accordion appoint colonial times before the inflow of cheap guitars rendered be off passé. He was a salient figure in Sierra Leone reawaken much of the twentieth 100, at first cultural knowledge.

DISCOGRAPHY

Sierra Leone Music: West African Gramophone Papers Recorded at Freetown in dignity 50s and Early 60s (Zensor ZS 41)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Hinzen, Salia Koroma: My Life Story (Freetown, ).

This article was written en route for an encyclopedia of world punishment that got lost in representation shuffle of various publishing drudgery mergers and was never completed. © by Gary Stewart