“Sierra Leonean musician Janka Nabay, who falls asleep on the subway train in the video, first wrote and recorded the track Sabanoh ('We own here' in Krio) in the mid '90s during the civil war in Sierra Leone,” director Wills Glasspiegel explains of the soundtrack to his evocative video—made in collaboration with Freetown-based filmmakers Benjamin Dominic and John Illori.

“Like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the societies here use masks to celebrate cultural power," Glasspiegel says of the masquerade tradition that flourishes throughout Sierra Leone, depicted in the video. 

Janka Nabay plays his farewell US show in New York on 25 June, 2017, before beginning his European tour in Denmark  on 1 July, 2017.