They've opened for Aerosmith, performed on Oprah and inspired an award-winning PBS documentary, backed by such high-profile funders as Angelina Jolie, Keith Richards and Paul McCartney.

Yet the story of Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars is one of survival rather than carefully calculated stardom. The band's members, each displaced by the West African nation's brutal civil war, began performing to boost the spirits of a population devastated by tragedy.

The group, which performs Wednesday at the Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom, was formed in the refugee camps of neighboring Guinea. Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars' likable leader, Reuben M. Koroma, says his countrymen lived in crowded shelters made of plastic, slept on mats and endured a limbo- like existence.

"In the camp it's just like a prison. There is nowhere to go, and then you are not entitled to work," Koroma said before a recent concert in Norway.

Music, quite simply, became an escape.

In 1999, at the Kalia camp, Koroma and wife Grace Ampomah were lucky enough to connect with Francis John Langba (known as Franco), a fellow musician Koroma had known before the war. Armed with just Franco's acoustic guitar, the trio began playing together.

The fledgling group was forced to relocate a year later, after the Guinean army attacked the camp. At the Sembakounya camp, in central Guinea, the threesome expanded the lineup, adding vocalists and percussionists Abdul Rahim Kamara (Arahim), Mohamed Bangura Medo and a talented teenage rapper named Black Nature.

Strapped for resources, the band initially crafted instruments out of wood and other materials available at the camp. Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars officially took off after a Canadian relief agency donated beat-up electric guitars and a secondhand sound system, making it easier to play for large crowds.

The band's biggest break occurred in 2002 when a pair of documentary filmmakers searching for musicians stumbled onto one of their rehearsals. Intrigued, Zach Niles and Banker White filmed the band over three years, following the group through a United Nations-supported tour of other camps and the musical group's eventual return to Freetown to record an album.

Last year, Niles and White lured the band to the U.S. for a tour of film festivals. Their performance at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, eventually landed the group a music publisher, a record deal and such high-profile gigs as the Montreal Jazz Festival.

The debut album of the Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars, Living Like a Refugee, might be rooted in hardship, but ultimately it's about triumphing over tragedy. Each of the members has overcome unbelievable horrors.

Koroma says the war seemed distant before rebel forces invaded Freetown. "I never thought these things would come to the heart of the city, because it was the seat of the government," he said.

The dreadlocked musician was mistaken for a rebel fighter by peacekeeping forces, tortured and nearly killed before an official recognized him as a local band leader.

Black Nature also was suspected of serving as a rebel fighter and beaten by Guinean officials after being orphaned by the war. "Arahim" Kamara watched rebels kill his father and then chop off his own arm. Medo witnessed the murder of his parents and wife before rebels forced him to beat his infant child to death. They later beat him and amputated his hand.

"The only way I can live here is by playing music," he says in the band's self-titled documentary.

And it's lively, inspiring, joyous music. With their mixture of reggae, traditional African folk rhythms and hints of calypso, the performers have no trouble bringing crowds to their feet.

As Koroma proudly declares in the film, "People who have problems, people who are frustrated, will be revived if they hear the greatness of Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars."

gonzaleze@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5350