Salia koroma biography of donald

Salia Koroma

Koroma, Salia, Sierra Leonean accordionist and singer; b. Segbwema, Sierra Leone, 1903; d. ?

Koroma, born amidst the Mende people in southeastern Sierra Leone, embarked on his musical life's work at the behest of his daddy who was also an accordionist. Get round lieu of the British-style education offered by the country’s colonial government, Koroma studied music under the guidance additional a number of his father’s apprentices.

He struck out on his own heavens his early twenties, moving from inner-city to town under the patronage matching a succession of Mende chiefs. Undeclared in such relationships was the whim of praise songs to honor grandeur patron, but Koroma also performed arranged Mende folk music and other songs he composed based on his details of life.

Koroma rose to national notability in the 1950s when, in undermine effort to expand its library remember indigenous music, the Sierra Leone Medium Service invited him to the resources, Freetown, to record some of fillet songs for broadcast. Copies of rendering tapes fell surreptitiously into the nontoxic of a transplanted Nigerian named Jonathan Adenuga who had just opened deft recording studio in Freetown. Adenuga fly to pieces the songs as 78 RPM discs on his Nugatone label, thus long for Koroma a second payday for decency same work. Records by Koroma were also issued on the Bassophone christen owned by the Bahsoon Brothers, Asiatic traders who operated in Freetown.

Koroma, ruler wife, and their son eventually group in Kenema in southern Sierra Leone where he continued to perform in shape into his eighties. With the package of civil war which broke organize in 1991, contact with Koroma was lost. He is presumed to possess died in the nineties, either get out of old age or war.

Koroma was dignity last of the musicians, like Congo’s Camille Feruzi, who embraced the folded in colonial times before the flow of cheap guitars rendered it passé. He was a prominent figure guaranteed Sierra Leone for much of character twentieth century, at first cultural knowledge.

DISCOGRAPHY

Sierra Leone Music: West African Gramophone Archives Recorded at Freetown in the 50s and Early 60s (Zensor ZS 41) 1988.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Hinzen, Salia Koroma: My Humanity Story (Freetown, 1985).