Bajah and the Dry Eye Crew, an ferocious trio from Sierra Leone, who’s lyrics pack a political punch–and who’s energetic performances have involved acrobatics and other physically impressive maneuvers of that caliber–have brought their message to the U.S. in a most surprising way. Growing up during the 11 year conflict, and being eye-witnesses to the mass violence that was inflicted upon their homeland, Bajah and the Dry Eye Crew members, Bajah, Dovy Dovy, and A-Klazz still have an air of love and gratitude that they exude in their everyday lives and certainly in their music, despite living in conflict for over a decade. The Revivalist spent an afternoon at Photo Rob’s studio for a fun shoot with the guys as we picked their brains about bearing witness to war, the initial culture shock of moving to the United States, and how their music has affected change in their communities where they are hometown superstars.
Bajah: We’re from Sierra Leone. We met each other in the studio. Those guys were doing their own stuff separately, and I was doing my own stuff separately, but we were doing the same type of work in the same studio. Our concept was almost the same, talking against the system, so the manager at the studio said we should collaborate, so we did. We recorded a song called talking about hardship—like there’s no place to sleep, no food to eat—and songs like that. We made them without fear. You really can’t do that in a country like Sierra Leone, because they will gun you down some way or another, but we stood up and become Dry Eye Crew, “dry eye” meaning bold. That’s why we gave ourselves the name “Dry Eye Crew” because we’re fighting against the system. No more tears in the eyes. Back in the days people were just crying when they were marginalized by the government. We use our power in our sound to criticize the government of the bad things that they are doing. We are trying to change the system. Our present managers, they went to Sierra Leone, we call them the Iron Ladies because they are really tough in what they are doing. So they went to Sierra Leone and know that we were positive youths trying to promote a country musically and they think that we have some talent, and they brought us over here to pass this message worldwide, because the message is all about Bajah love you know? For being in a long decade of war, but still we got courage and want people to forget about that and stop the fighting. That’s the message you want to pass out to the world. We preach about love.
How did you find the courage to come together to speak about this?
Dovy: When we were in Sierra Leone, we had been through 11 years of war. We see only the negative part of the war, and the negative part of the government. When the war broke through Sierra Leone, people in the provinces did not know why the war broke through. The government have the problems with the rebels, and the rebels have problems with the government. Every fraction was just trying to get into power. The government was giving certain information to the people that the people don’t know about. And the rebels were convincing the poor civilians in the village to bring them to the war, capturing them to force them to fight. We had seen all the negative part of everything, and decided to go into the studio and start singing about positive things so that people would realize what caused the war, and what the after effects of the war is.
We would sing against the government because the government were misleading the poor civilians in the village who could not understand about the war. And the rebels were going through the village to capture some of the civilians and bring them to fight, so everything and everyone was just corrupt. We understand and we knew what the cause of the war was, and we decided to go into the studio and start making a positive message so that if our music is playing all over the radio, in the villages, the farmer can sit in his farm and listen to our lyrics and know the reality of what is going on. That’s how we get ourselves involved and start singing all of these positive messages to change the war and take some people’s mind out of the war. As the time came, some young boys and young girls would just volunteer to fight alongside the rebels because they don’t know what is going on, or the after effects. But since we put the lyrics together they started to understand.
A-Klazz: A lot of people came to consciousness, a lot of awareness was all over the street because at first it was just like the president was in power and they were going to be listening to whatever he says, not knowing that they just give some sugarcoated messages to the youth, like it’s going to get better. “We’re going to come into your community and trying to bring some development, so you guys should vote at the next big election. You guys should be out there and cast your vote for me.” But we started bringing conscious music to the community, like “you should vote, but you should vote wisely, and make sure you cast your vote for the right man, and make sure you don’t be misled.” So we made songs telling the youth to keep vigilant and keep the city clean and all of that—types of songs like that would bring awareness to the community.
There are quite a few African artists right now who are speaking about conflict, war, the AIDS epidemic, and other issues plaguing their home communities in ways that are foreign to American audiences. Yet there’s a growing interest in these narratives. Why do you think that is?
A-Klazz: I just believe that all over the world now, nobody wants to be in a situation like that, you want your country to be peaceful out there. You want to go in and come out without anyone harassing you. Throughout whole months you would stay in doors waiting for the government to say “come out.” No one wants to be in a situation like that. Musicians try to bring the message out, just like Bajah said, it should be universal love all over. With love we can all live as one people. If anybody comes across that type of message, you definitely want to listen and follow the message and put it into practice. Let there be peace and no more war. For some of us who have been through this, we don’t want innocent people like you be part of those types of experiences.
Dovy: As for us, we have been in Sierra Leone since the war started and ended for 11 years. We know each and everything about war. Some people don’t know about violence. We always spread positive messages out there just for people to know how to stay positive and be peaceful and happy. That’s what we’re trying to spread all around the world: peace, love and happiness. I believe that if everybody comes as one, and people have a peaceful mind for each other, there would be no more war. We are always trying to spread love all over the world through our music. You see love and energy in our performances.
Bajah: Dry Eye, my crew, we try to promote peace. Everwhere you go there’s a lot of violence, even in the states. When you watch T.V., on the cop programs, you see a lot of violence and stuff going on—people shooting one another. That’s something that we are against. When we came here we would see a lot of, like on the block in Bedstuy. You see them shooting people and there’s no war. In Sierra Leone there was a real war where people were killing each other, but here there’s no war. These are the types of things that we trying to talk about. People should just love each other. Don’t take life because you didn’t know how to make it. We are trying to pass this message. That’s the main reason why American’s can relate to our songs too. We are preaching about non-violence and there’s a lot of violence going on here, and they will appreciate the message because it’s real.
What was it like when you first moved to the U.S. Can you describe that experience?
Dovy: My experience when I first came to the United States before the war ended. Back home in Sierra Leone when I was a little boy in the village, I used to see a lot of love. If I was in my compound, and you are walking by my compound, you would have to say hi to everybody. Everybody in the compound is connected. I had this energy in me before the war started. When I came to the United States and lived in Bedstuy, Brooklyn, and I started saying hi to people most of the time, because it’s in me. There was a time a guy just wanted to punch me in my face because I said hi. I was like “whoa what is this?” I just wanted to be nice to him because that’s how we do back home. If I’m passing by your compound, I have the right to stop you if you are passing by my compound and you don’t say hi. That’s my experience. When I went back home to Sierra Leone, I started telling people and they were like “if you say hi to people, they’re going to punch you in your face?” I said “not everybody, but some guys in Bedstuy haha.” It’s just crazy.
Bajah: In Africa, everybody just greet each and everybody. Some people met us in the elevator this time and they didn’t say hi. In Africa, everybody is just friendly. Sometimes you will say “hey, can you help me?” and here people don’t even look at you. Maybe they are scared of you because of too much violence, or maybe they got robbed by someone who looked like me. It makes people scared. It’s not so in Africa, there everybody just embraces each other, with the exception of the war, because it was a rebellious war. It’s crazy that people just came from another country and tried to infiltrate, and try to fight against the government that was there. Part of Sierra Leone and all of Africa, we embrace each other. But here it’s so different, but it is a different culture.
The musical influences in your music are so vast. Who and what are you inspired by?
Bajah: In Sierra Leone we listen to a diverse styles of music, not like in America where they just like hip-hop or something. We listen to every kind of music. We get inspiration from different artists like reggae: Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. Hip-hop we listen to Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, DMX, and a lot of African music like Fela Kuti, salif keita. We get different influences, and we try to blend them together and make our own sound, a blend of everything. That’s the kind of general music that we want to put out there. It’s a blend of everything because we absorb from different kinds of music that we try to put it into our own style. We aren’t trying to copy nobody.
A-Klazz: It’s a blend of hip-hop, reggae, calypso, you name it. It is a blend of everything. We are from a country that just loves music, it doesn’t matter how it sounds. Music encourages a lot of things. If you are a huge fan of music and you are in Sierra Leone definitely has different types of music, especially if you aspire to be a musician too. It’s our own different style of music. On stage at first you might think we are hip-hoppers, but before you know it we’ll switch. Before you know it, we switch again.
Dovy: When I was a little boy back home, I used to listen to The Roots. I’m still so excited, we never thought we’d be connected to them. I used to watch their videos and listen to their songs back in the day.
For more information, please check out PlanetBajah.com, join their facebook fanpage by looking for Bajah and the Dry Eye Crew, and follow them on Twitter at PlanetBajah. Check out more on Bajah and the Dry Eye Crew at Okay Africa, our sister site.
Interview by Boyuan Gao & Nora Ritchie
Photography by Photo Rob
