New Africell podcast series celebrates Sierra Leone
Charlie Haffner explores 400 years of Sierra Leone’s history and culture through objects, landmarks, literature and music
Highlights
§ Dame Judi Dench remembers performing Shakespeare in Sierra Leone in 1964
§ Chief Minister David Moinina Sengeh explains Freetown’s nickname ‘the Athens of West Africa’
§ Novelist Aminatta Forna unpacks Sierra Leone’s oral tradition
§ Charlie visits the Gola Rainforest to learn about Sierra Leone’s threatened wildlife
§ Professor Joe AD Alie talks about Freetown’s iconic cotton tree
Listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Buzzsprout and all other good podcast platforms.
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19 JANUARY 2024| Salone Stories is a podcast series about Sierra Leone. It takes a traditional medium of oral storytelling and adapts it to a contemporary digital format.
Sierra Leone is an extraordinary country. Known as the “Athens of West Africa” but also for its brutal civil war, it presents a paradox. To know modern Africa, it helps to understand Sierra Leone.
The series tells six stories about people, places, objects, and events. The stories illuminate the country’s origins, politics, languages, music, natural environment, and demographics.
The series is presented by Charlie Haffner. Charlie is a playwright, historian and traditional communicator. He was national commissioner for monuments and relics and founded Sierra Leone’s biggest folk festival. Charlie’s dramatic flair, knowledge, warmth and love for his country is the series’ magic ingredient.
Charlie begins his journey at Freetown’s famous cotton tree (which fell during a storm after the episode was recorded). The cotton tree was a totem. It personified Sierra Leone, binding generations and testifying to the country’s historical connection to the abolition of slavery. In episode one Charlie speaks to Olivette Linda Barnette, a director at Sierra Leone’s national museum, and Joe AD Alie, a professor of history at Freetown’s Fourah Bay College, about the legend of the tree.
Episode two looks at Sierra Leone’s national anthem, “High We Exalt Thee, Realm of the Free”. The anthem symbolises nationhood in a country with a violent history. It was written during the heady build-up to Sierra Leone’s independence in 1961, when Sierra Leone fizzed with excitement and uncertainty. Charlie speaks to Dr Sama Banya, a politician whose career has tracked the biggest developments in post-independence Sierra Leone, about why the anthem still resonates despite intervening cycles of bloodshed.
Sierra Leone’s lingua franca, Krio, is a melange of European and African languages. The most important work in modern Sierra Leonean literature is a Krio translation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Produced in 1964 by journalist Thomas Decker, ‘Juliohs Siza’ is an intoxicating fusion of Ancient Rome and contemporary West Africa. In episode three Charlie speaks to scholar Raymond De Souza George about the play’s significance. He also discusses Sierra Leone’s oral tradition with writer Aminatta Forna and listens to Oscar-winning actress Dame Judi Dench recall performing Shakespeare in Sierra Leone as a young actress.
Sierra Leone’s other lingua franca is music. The country’s impact on Afrobeats is often traced to a musician called Geraldo Pino. Geraldo Pino took Freetown’s dancehalls by storm in the 1960s and inspired future Nigerian superstar Fela Kuti with his iconoclastic style. In episode four Charlie asks music producer Dr Adedayo Thomas (who died after the series was recorded) to define Salone music. In an age of smartphones and Spotify, fears for the future of traditional music are justified. But there is a countermovement. Charlie hears about it from Fantacee Wiz, a musician, poet and activist who is reviving Sierra Leone’s folk music traditions for a young, social-media savvy audience.
Many visitors to Freetown visit the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary. Tacugama is getting busier as Sierra Leone’s human population expands and its rainforest shrinks. Tacugama’s best known resident was Bruno, a chimp who escaped in 2006. Bruno’s story gripped the country and he has since come to personify ideals of freedom and autonomy. In episode five Charlie talks to Bala Amarasekaran, Tacugama’s founder, about the plight of chimps in Sierra Leone. Charlie also visits the Gola Rainforest on Sierra Leone’s remote border with Liberia. There, he asks national park director Francis Massaquoi about the impact of deforestation and discusses what can be done to spark enthusiasm for conservation in Sierra Leone.
Charlie concludes the series in Freetown. Fourah Bay College is responsible for Freetown’s nickname: “the Athens of West Africa”. The history of the college tracks the history of Sierra Leone as a whole, from the colonial period, to independence, to the twenty first century. In episode six, Charlie learns about the university from one of its leading scholars, Professor Joe AD Alie. Dr David Moinina Sengeh, Sierra Leone’s Chief Minister, explains that although Sierra Leone has long been associated with elite learning, the goal of the current government is to make education more inclusive and innovative.
Charlie ends his journey at the summit of the splendid Leicester Peak. The series has revealed a proud, ambitious and dynamic country that is conscious of its past and excited about its future. Charlie contemplates his journey and concludes with the thought that Sierra Leone still has its best stories yet to come.
We hope you enjoy listening.
Salone Stories is a podcast series produced by Novel for Africell.
- § Presented: Charlie Haffner
- § Written and created: Charlie Haffner and Sam Williams
- § Executive producers: Sam Williams and Max O'Brien
- § Edited: Nadia Mehdi
- § Sound design and mixing: Naomi Clarke
- § Special thanks: Abdul Karim Sesay, Shadi Gerjawi, Eleanor Biggs, Claire Crofton, Pippa Smith and the Africell Impact Foundation.
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