Release New Album
March 23, 2010
Buy yours here and benefit
Schools for Salone

(See video preview)

2010 US Tour
April 7-13 Northeast USA
May 17-24 West Coast, Rockies
(Tour Dates & Places)

(See Tour Poster)

Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars craft music that transforms and uplifts with a spirited and infectious fusion of traditional West African music, roots reggae and rhythmic folk. 

The band features the talents of Sierra Leonean musicians who had been living as refugees in the West African nation of the Republic of Guinea.  Their music decries the horrors of war and is an inspiring symbol of the healing power of music.   With the release of their first album, "Living Like A Refugee”, the band has been catapulted onto the world stage and recruited a club of A-list fans and backers including, Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, Bob Geldof, Ice Cube and Aerosmith who had the group open for them.

Band leader, founder, singer, Reuben Koroma says, "People who have problems, people who are frustrated, will be revived if they hear the greatness of a Refugee All Stars Band."  (Quote from Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars documentary movie by Zach Niles and Banker White)

Their new album, Rise and Shine, displays "... an identity based as much on skill, imagination and charisma as on their undeniably touching story” (The Los Angeles Times).  Cumbancha will release the album on March 23, 2010.

Cindy Nofziger, Schools for Salone's founder and Executive Director, first met the All Stars when she offered to cook a traditional casava leaf dinner for them after a 2007 performance in Snowmass, CO.  Her casava leaf dinners have become a tradition for them and the start of a lasting friendship.  When Cindy was in Sierra Leone in March 2009, she dropped in on one of their concerts and they pulled her up on stage with them.

Benefit Concert
for Schools for Salone
was June 15, 2009 at
Neumos in Seattle

(See the 2009 Promo Flier)

 

Prior to this June 2009 Benefit, the Refugee All Stars have also performed benefit concerts in Aspen Colorado and Dallas, Texas in 2008.  Click here to read the press coverage in the  Aspen Times, the Aspen Time Out, and the Dallas Pegasus News.

 

At the June 2009 Benefit Concert, KEXP's DJ, Darek Mazzone, a local producer and DJ in Seattle since 1992, was a special guest. 

(Read more about him.) 

 

The concert was opened by The Georgetown Orbits, who boast a heavy regimen of traditional Ska and upbeat, roots-influenced Reggae.  They have been turning heads in the Northwest as one of the only bands to pay tribute to the old sounds of Jamaican Ska, a style which has gained notable popularity in Seattle since the band’s conception in late 2004.

The nationally distributed 7” single, My Baby’s Okay, released on Olympia’s Dead End Social Club label, made its musical mark in February of 2006.  The following summer was spent performing a solid set of classic Reggae and Ska at the Seattle Weekly Music Awards Showcase, Northwest Folklife Festival, Victoria Ska Festival, and Seattle’s Hempfest.

With the release of the group’s full-length self-titled debut album in August 2007, the sounds of the Orbits have further penetrated the airwaves of the Northwest, earning airplay on 90.3FM KEXP and 91.3FM KBCS (Seattle), 90.7FM KSER (Everett), 89.9FM KGRG (Auburn), and KPSU 1450AM (Portland).  Fans of reggae, dancehall, jam, funk, soul, jazz, ska, and rock are now singing along to choruses while they dance to the hard-hitting rhythms and tastefully harmonized horn lines of the Georgetown Orbits.

Neumos Crystal Ball and Reading Room most often referred to simply as Neumos, is a mid sized music venue located at 925 East Pike Street in Seattle Washington. The venue was originally opened as Moe’s Mo’Roc’N Café in 1992 and re-launched in 2003 as Neumos (pronounced “new moe’s”).

The music was fabulous!
and helped to build schools in Sierra Leone

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