Build Music

“All I am about is making history,” says Janka Nabay. After a string of cassette releases, Nabay became a star of electronic bubu music back home in Sierra Leone. But he was soon forced to escape his homeland’s ex­plosive civil war in the 1990s. Over the years, Nabay gradually rebuilt his musical life in the United Stat e s while supporting himself working at hotels and fried chicken restaurants. Nabay’s bubu music may sound futuristic, but its existence spans centuries. The original bubu is cloaked in mythology: as legend has it, a young “bubu boy” took the music from witches 500 years ago, brought it to the public at large, and sacrificed his own life in the process. Over time, bubu evolved into a music played collectively on percussive instruments and bamboo horns. Upon the arrival of Islam in Sierra Leone, the hypnotic sound of bubu music was adapted for processionals during Ramadan. As Janka says: “Bubu is an old, old music, but people don’t know about it. You can add new things into the beat if you know it really well, and make your own sound out of it.”