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Joe Woyee
Joe Woyee was born in Greenville, Liberia, in Sinoe County. He is the son of a teacher mother and a medical officer father. He remembers a very carefree childhood going to a good school and helping out on his grandfather’s farm in the summer. He began playing music at an early age when he played guitar with the "Fantastic Beginners"—an ensemble made up of children from his elementary school.
Joe’s Parents moved to Monrovia and Joe began classes at the private Baptist school where his mother worked. Here, Joe picked up the guitar in earnest and learned very quickly from his classmates. Naturally, some of the more talented students at the school wanted to form a band; there were plenty of guitarists and singers, but Joe was one of the few with experience in drumming (Which Joe picked up playing door to door for money during the Liberian version of Santa Claus). Woyee was the natural choice and "The Children of the Green Acres" was born. This band became one of the first in Liberia to play original popular music. Most of the other bands were playing American pop that dominates the airwaves in Liberia to this day.
Woyee moved to Minneapolis in 1980 to go to school and to get away from the political turmoil that was just beginning in his homeland. After settling in, Joe found an ad in the paper from a Saint Thomas émigré that was looking for a band. Joe joined and along with four other musicians founded Kairos. This band played reggae with a twist. This is how Joe described their sound:
"We had a keyboard player from Texas, A guitarist from Aruba, A singer from St. Thomas, the bassist was from Interlochen, Michigan and me from Liberia. We played a style of Caribbean music, but it had an international flavor—it had the Kairos Sound"
After Kairos was disbanded Joe joined another group called "Out of Africa." It was during this time that he started to contemplate the Liberian musical identity. Joe remembers the highly Americanized music scene in Liberia: "There was only 30 minutes a day out of the whole 24 hours that was reserved for African Music" The true music of Liberia was beginning to form in the early 1980’s but that advent was halted by the civil war. "Everyone is feeling the hardship now" said Woyee "everything came to a stop."
Joe decided to address this problem by taking a chance in the US to create the Liberian musical signature: "Jake [D] was doing the music and I was doing the music, so I said "Why don’t we put a company together to look for Liberian Music, sell it, package it, put it on the web?""
Joe is now working toward his goals through Kinzo Music Works, a music studio in Brooklyn Park, MN.
Homepage :: Kinzo Music Works :: Research on Liberian Music
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