Refugee All-Stars have tales to tell

EVERY now and then, a performance comes along in which the back story takes precedence over the music. The appearance by Sierra Leone’s Refugee All-Stars at the Knitting Factory on Tuesday night, for example, followed a wave of publicity for the ensemble’s coming together amid the bloody unrest of Sierra Leone’s 10-year civil war. The story was further dramatized by an award-winning documentary chronicling the musicians’ difficult, early meetings in the refugee camps of Guinea, practicing on battered old guitars and makeshift percussion in the shadowy illumination of oil lamps.

Given the circumstances, the All-Stars would probably have been greeted enthusiastically even if they’d performed like earnest amateurs. But, with bandleader and singer Reuben Koroma (a professional musician in Freetown prior to the war-triggered exodus) serving as a musical sparkplug, the music easily stood on its own.

The set was largely dedicated to music from the band’s CD, “Living Like a Refugee,” with the stark title track leading the way through a collection of songs, most sung in English, ranging from poignant tales of refugee life and sardonic survivor’s witticisms to fervent calls for peace and harmony.

Stylistically, the music was a heterogeneous blend of reggae, West African highlife, Afro-pop and a liberal sprinkling of American blues. But African music, whether traditional or popular, always seems to be rooted in the call-and-response patterns that exist in most of the continent’s myriad musical styles. Virtually every one of the All-Stars’ tunes featured back-and-forth vocal dialogue between Koroma and the other musicians, often via surprisingly lush harmonic interaction. Lead guitarist Geassay “Jah Sun” Dowu Bull added slippery, blues-inflected lines to the simmering musical gumbo.

It’s worth noting that the All-Stars, in performance, played with considerably more power and confidence than comes through on their sole recording. The group’s material also needs to transcend its repetitious, four-bar patterns. Based on the quality of their performance, the All-Stars are well on their way to establishing an identity based as much on skill, imagination and charisma as on their undeniably touching story.