Boima Tucker writing in Cluster Mag:
More hereMy father’s family comes from the Sierra Leone side of the Liberia-Sierra Leone border, so my interest in visiting Liberia stemmed from a desire to strengthen my relationship with my patrimonial homeland. When I was offered the opportunity to intern in Monrovia through my master’s degree program, I jumped at the chance. The work I wanted to engage in when I arrived was guided by my occupations: a student of “International Development” and a DJ/Producer in the “Global Bass” scene. My experience in these fields, combined with years of international travel, has taught me that my American passport, my education, and my access to money puts me in a privileged position compared to most of my music-making peers around the world. This self-consciousness was with me before I even arrived in the country. After a few hours of being in town, my motivations were clear; I headed to a neighborhood drinking spot to check out some local music.
It was important to me to have a tangible project at the end of my time in Liberia. Noting the success that the Ghanian industry has had with the help of the Internet, I thought it would be a good idea to start a Liberian music blog with the idea that Liberian-based musicians could help upload content and therefore promote their work in the U.S. It turned out that shaky internet access in the country made this a nearly impossible task; the blog has now become a sort of digital relic of my research. Besides, I hoped to carry out a project that was a bit less open-ended, something conceptually complete I could point to at the end of my visit. My first thought was a DJ mix , but as I’d just visited Benjamin of Akwaaba Music in Ghana, I started lobbying him via Twitter to help me put together a compilation of Liberian artists.
