During the documentary Refugee All Stars you’ll hear the film’s namesakes, a reggae-influenced band of Sierra Leonean refugees, belt out the chorus of an ancient Lucky Dube song: “Daddy, wherever you are, remember me/ In whatever you do, I love you.” It is a fleeting yet defining moment in the film — how the group appropriated the tune, recontextualised it to suit their circumstances and, in the process, lent it that much more resonance.
“You guys have no idea what this sub-continent represents to our [African] musicians,” says the film’s co-
producer Alphonse Munyaneza, a public information officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who is a Rwandan refugee.
Munyaneza’s film, however, is not a tribute to Southern Africa’s influence on the larger continent. Instead, it is a celebration of music’s power to restore hope in the face of tragedy.
Directed by United States-based filmmakers Banker White and Zach Niles, the film is a natural progression from Munyaneza’s extensive music networks, which began with the Kigali-based band Inono Stars in the early 1980s. Having travelled to numerous refugee camps to assist with development programmes, he has repeatedly witnessed how music can bypass bureaucracy and diffuse life-threatening tensions.
Munyaneza relies on music to interact with refugees and inevitably becomes part of the bands he encounters, providing material support in exchange for their commitment to raising awareness. “When I arrive in a place, I check who is an artist first and then who is an artist for a cause,” he says. “I encourage musicians to make a statement about their situations … Some are committed, some are not, but they can always be quickly mobilised.”
In the film the band members reluctantly return to Sierra Leone for a few weeks after the civil war, through the UN’s “go-and-see” programme. One member, Mohammed, is too traumatised to go back and opts to stay behind. When the band returns, they triumphantly tell their compatriots at one of their concerts that the 10-year civil war is “done done”.
This helped to spark a massive repatriation that saw the number of Sierra Leonean refugees drop from hundreds of thousands to a mere 2Â 000 in 2004.
As a documentary, Refugee All Stars is as exciting and hopeful as it is rudimentary. The band are not technically superb, yet they instinctively capture the essence of what it is to be a refugee, without resorting to Afro-pessimism.
Another documentary, Favela Rising, set in a sprawling drug-army-controlled ghetto outside Rio de Janeiro, tells a similar story of self determination in the face of despair. Relying on colour saturation and jagged editing to accentuate the war-zone tinge of the favela, directors Jeff Zimbalist and Matt Mochary hone in on AfroReggae, a growing collective who champion African cultural awareness through dance, percussion, capoeira and music.
Although AfroReggae’s baile-funk-driven percussion is invigorating and charismatic, the directors use the music sparingly, preferring to concentrate on the surreal nature of drug-fuelled ghetto violence — where 12-year-olds play with real guns and aspire to be drug lords.
“We all kiss their asses,” says one youth. “We’re like, ‘Oh shit! What cool guns.’ All the teenage girls chase the guys that have machine guns.” Zimbalist and his colleague would leave DV cams with the AfroReggae crew for extended periods, which led to candid scenes and interviews that carry the bleak film along. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that AfroReggae’s popularity is as a result of its ability to fill a void in the community.
While most baile funk tunes celebrate the drug barons, this crew regards music as a starting point to bigger things, such as recycling, IT courses, documentary production and health-awareness projects. Although the two films are made by outsiders, through eschewing narration they maintain a certain degree of integrity and amount to the subjects telling their own stories.
The documentaries show at the 3 Continental Film Festival. For more info visit www.3continentsfestival.co.za