A day in the life of King Fisher

A day in the life of King Fisher

A Sierra Leonean musician with ‘conscious vibes’

It’s Saturday and the venue is Body Guard Studio in a backstreet in Freetown with King Fisher, Sierra Leone’s no. 1 DJ turned musician, music producer and documentary maker. He’s just back from up country where he’s been shooting videos to heighten public understanding of issues facing Sierra Leoneans.

A passion for his nation and music immerse Fisher. Opportunities to relax are rare. It’s a 6.30 start and after listening to BBC World News, it’s straight to the studio to hook up new equipment for music and video production. 

For many Sierra Leoneans like King Fisher, aka Emrys Savage, the civil war altered the course of the future. The music scene in his country took off during the decade-long conflict of the ’90s, “when everything else ceased to function.” 

“At that time I was a DJ and we started having rap competitions. Most of the time, I was chosen to be the judge. At one of them I met a group called Black Roots. They were the first young group to play live music. I was so impressed that I made a promise to help with the albums. That was in 1995.”

In 1997, Fisher started to compose his own songs. He explains how the studio’s name came about: “There was a British Forces broadcasting station, with a very powerful DJ who had a group of guys called the Bodyguard. I just took the name from them. I also saw the name kind of protecting against many things that were to come later.”

He speaks of the influence of Jimmy Bangura (aka Jimmy B), a Sierra Leonean with a record deal with EMI who spent most of his youth in the United States and South Africa, and was the first to bring digital equipment to Sierra Leone. He set up Paradise Recording Studio after the war in 2002 and gave the opportunity to young people, collectively known as the Paradise Family, to release the first album made in Sierra Leone. It was a big hit. “I tried to get Black Roots into the Paradise Family but couldn’t. But I made a promise to them that one day I would set up my own recording studio.”

Another door opened for Fisher when he was working for Search for Common Ground, an international NGO with an antenna in Sierra Leone with whom he has continued to work, shooting videos on issues of concern to Sierra Leoneans from health to tackling corruption. “I met an expatriate guy who was setting up the digital equipment there. I thought, wow, I can buy a computer, I can buy a few things, hook them up and make a studio. And that became the digital studio.”

Fisher breaks off for a tea break at 10.30 then heads straight back to the studio until lunch at 3 pm. He tells us about his first album release:

“When we did our first compilation at the Body Guard Studio called the Body Guard Revolution Chapter 1 people asked me, ‘what’s the meaning of the revolution, do you want to go back to war?’ I told them that this one is a positive revolution.” For Fisher, ‘conscious vibes’ are important to each album: “When I did that first album, I told the guys that we have to speak about things that led us to war.”

U go si am

“On that album there was a song in Krio called, U go si am or You will see, sung by Emmerson,” Fisher continues: “the message was that you are corrupt and are misusing the country’s resources and one day it will come fall back on you. That one became a very big hit. People so fell in love with that song because it said what they wanted to say and couldn’t.”

Fisher went on to produce a solo album, Borbor Bele for Emmerson Bockarie. Its title track also hit a public nerve. “It means a human being with a huge stomach, or you are embezzling money, that’s why your stomach is so big.” Fisher claims the song brought down the last government. So has he ever been censored? “Never,” he replies. 

Fisher explains his musical blend: “Most of the young guys are into the hip-hop, Notorious B.I.G and Tupac, all the rap stuff, so I thought why not bring the rap into the local language, Krio, and blend the hip-hop beat with Caribbean and Jamaican type of music. At first people laughed. Now everybody’s playing it.”

Many young people in Sierra Leone are now trying to make money out of music. Fisher fears some of what is produced is sub-standard. He also intends to do something about piracy. You just have to go to any crossroads to get hold of a cheap, copied compilation for just 4,000 Leones – under US$2. 

“We’ve formed an organisation, the National Association of Performing Artists (NAPA).There is an anti-piracy law but the problem is that it’s outdated. So if you take somebody who has been pirating your stuff to court you will end up spending more than what the court will award you. We are going to use the power of music again to change things. We haven’t got the name of the song yet. They have to bring that law into full functionality.”

Fisher is working on two albums, one of which is dedicated to children and is to be sung mostly by kids from an orphanage. Sierra Leone has signed up to the Child Rights Bill of the United Nations, he says, but parliament has yet to ratify it. “The focus will be on getting parliament to sit up and pass that bill. Basic education is supposed to be free but when you go to school there are so many charges, like buying books, that you find out that you are spending more than if it was not free.”

He’s also brought on the current hottest female star in Sierra Leone, DJ Lulu: “She went through a lot of things as a kid. She is of mixed race. Her father is Lebanese and her mother is Sierra Leonean. But the Lebanese Community doesn’t like those kinds of relationships. Her father died when she was very young so the Lebanese side of her relatives decided to push her out so she struggled for herself. She has a song about the way she grew up, Na Me Kam So. She is saying: “You thought I wouldn’t get here but here I am.”

He’s also busy with videos for Search for Common Ground on local governance. Local council elections will be held in July 2008. “What we are doing is going to locations across the regions and capturing footage of how councils are performing and trying to compare them with other councils so when they have council workshops with councillors from different areas they can play these videos and the people can comment and say, this council is doing good with their money, or this council is not performing.” The aim is to give people a voice for change. Another of Fisher’s concern is a guarantee of a government of unity including all tribes: “This is going to be the subject of one of my songs.”

It’s around 7 pm and Fisher leaves his studio to hang out with ‘his men’ and drink a beer. After, he may watch an action film. And he’ll have to find time, he says, to get his dancing legs working again for the launch of the new albums.

Debra Percival