Joseph Bangura

He is 29 years old and comes from Sierra Leone: Joseph Bangura, a fourth year student at the Rotterdam Pop Academy of the Rotterdam Conservatoire. As a musician, he combines pop with traditional African music. The four years that he has now spent in the Netherlands have provided broad and varied experiences, including musical experiences. A portrait.

So, Joseph Bangura. In 2003, he performed together with Trijntje Oosterhuis at the Bevrijdingsfestival and the Friends for War Child concert (Ahoy’ Rotterdam, 15,000 people in attendance). In 2004, Alidus Hidding of Time Bandits and the Belgian singer Barbara Dex invited him to sing with them at the Euro Song festival in Brussels. Last year, he performed his own song, Sweet Salon, at the Friends for War Child concert. Together with Ruud Lubbers (former prime minister of the Netherlands) and Arjan Erkel (former Doctors without Borders worker), Joseph made a song with the CDA (Dutch Christian Democratic party) in Rotterdam. In addition to his studies, he gives gospel workshops at schools and churches. And he has appeared in documentaries from LLink (television and radio broadcaster) and the music channel The Box.
Joseph has been involved with music his whole life, both singing and guitar. Not so strange, considering the very musical family that he comes from. When Joseph was 14, civil war erupted in Sierra Leone, a war that would last until 2002. ‘My music has always kept me going. It was and is a way to deal with my feelings. You could see it as a sort of therapy, a way to get through life,’ he says. ‘I learned to play the guitar in Freetown, the capital, where it was safe. After I finished high school, I started a programme of study in the performing arts. That’s where I first encountered War Child. I gave musical workshops for children on behalf of War Child. Finally, they asked me to come to the Netherlands to act as an ambassador for Sierra Leone. I said yes immediately.’
As soon as he arrived, Joseph wanted to attend a music conservatoire in order to go further with his music. By word of mouth, he ended up at the Rotterdam Conservatoire. Joseph has been really happy here. ‘Because of my studies at the Rotterdam Pop Academy, I have learned to look at music and ways of making music very differently. I do things now that I would never have thought of doing before, like playing rock ‘n’ roll. But the first year was difficult. I had a lot of things to learn, about Dutch culture, for instance.’
When he graduates, Joseph will be the first student from Sierra Leone with a degree in pop music. When he is done studying, he wants to go further with music, preferably in the Netherlands, which has become his second home. He hopes to secure a recording contract and bring his music to the whole world. ‘I wouldn’t mind becoming an international superstar,’ laughs Joseph. He is currently working, in collaboration with the Rotterdam Conservatoire, to set up a pop school for the victims of war in Sierra Leone.
Joseph will soon be recording one of his own numbers at the Rotterdam Pop Academy. After that, he plans to produce a CD. He’d like to use his position as a musician to help people in the world who are less fortunate. In short, Joseph Bangura is someone we’ll be hearing more from.

My name is Joseph Bangura. I was born and brought up in a village in a northern province of Sierra Leone called Madina.

My whole family is musical, and as a boy I heard the songs my mother used to sing, as a traditional gospel singer. I took up singing those songs, beating cups and African drums. As a boy
my love for music grew very strong, and at a certain point I wanted something more than what I heard from my mother. At age 14 I begged my parents to allow me to visit a man whom I heard had a guitar (in my village no one had a guitar) in another village 18 miles away from mine, who could play very well. My parents gave me permission, so I started going there every weekend, walking bare foot for almost half a day. When I got tired I sat on a stone or claimed a tree to rest for some time. I said to myself with tears in my eyes: "Someday I will sing for thousands and write great songs". Even when I was working with my father on the farm I would not work hard, all I did was think about music how I could get myself away from the farm and be in a music school somewhere in the world.

website: www.jbangura.com