Musicians Steady Bongo, left, Matt McLaren and Joseph Paye are teaming up to play Friday night at Tazza in Providence.

The Providence Journal / John Freidah

PROVIDENCE — When Steady Bongo, the singer from Sierra Leone, plays Thursday and Friday in Providence, he’ll be backed by a group that was formed by the twin circumstances of civil war in western Africa and the changing populations of Providence.

The backing band for Bongo’s Providence appearances includes Joseph Paye, an old Liberian friend of Bongo’s who ended up in Providence via Sierra Leone and a Guinean refugee camp, and Matt McLaren, a Providence drummer who met, befriended and learned from Paye in the course of his job as a caseworker in the refugee resettlement program at the International Institute.

It’s a reunion for Bongo and Paye, who haven’t seen each other in 10 years and who lost contact in the blur of civil war and resettlement.

Paye and Bongo met in Sierra Leone in 1990. Paye had fled Liberia, where that country’s civil war was already in full force, and the two played many shows at parties and nightclubs in Freetown, as well as some touring.

As the war got worse, however, Paye left Sierra Leone and fled to Guinea, where he spent three months in a refugee camp. Friction between the countries led to mistreatment of the refugees, Paye says.

“They were not friendly,” says Paye of the Guineans. Paye left the refugee camp and lived in Guinea, and was an original member of The Sierra Leone All-Stars. He left the group when he had a chance to head for the United States in 2004. He had a daughter in Providence who filed the immigration paperwork for him, and within the first week after arriving, he headed to the refugee resettlement program at the International Institute.

That’s where he met McLaren, a caseworker and also a drummer with local outfits including The Killdevils and Alec Redfearn and The Eyesores.

As McLaren began working with Paye helping him get a job, they learned more about each other.

“I said, ‘I’m a musician,’ ” Paye recalls, “and he said, ‘Me too!’ ” As McLaren learned more about Paye’s style of music, he was more intrigued. “I could see Joe had this incredible innate ability.” And when the institute wanted to put on a show of musicians in the program, McLaren put together a band with Paye.

The group’s been together ever since, with a few changes of membership.“Now he plays good African music,” Paye says of McLaren.

“Not bad for a white guy,” McLaren says. “I’m getting there.”

BONGO WAS born Lansana Sheriff, in Daru, in the Kailahun District of Sierra Leone. He had recorded hit songs and was also working as a radio DJ when war broke out in 1990. His hometown was near a rebel stronghold. After a few years, Bongo decided he had to do something.

“Gentlemen,” he recalls telling his band, “what is important is, we need to play music to sensitize the fighters that what they are doing is bad for the people.”

Bongo says he got messages from rebels that he would be beheaded for not supporting the war. But with troops from the United Nations, Nigeria, Ghana and elsewhere fighting in and around his homeland, “I decided, ‘OK, you know what? Let us sacrifice our lives. Because I think music can do something to bring this war to an end.”

With the help of World Vision and Talking Drum Studios, Bongo put together a tour of “rebel centers” called The Road to Peace. He spent 1998 and 1999 traveling the country, spreading a message of nonviolence.

When he went to rebel strongholds, he was met with gunshots in the air — until they recognized who he was. “Most of these guys were my schoolmates,” Bongo says.

The war came to end earlier in this decade. But Bongo still tours with the support of Talking Drum Studios and their parent organization, Searching for Common Ground, interspersing his music with messages about HIV prevention, women’s rights and nonviolence.

In the States, however, Bongo has another mission during occasional summer visits: “Telling people about my country. … Most [Americans] know that there was war in Sierra Leone; some people don’t even know it has come to an end. We want to encourage people to come there.”

BONGO AND PAYE reunited this week for the first time since a brief meeting in Guinea in 2000. The Providence shows will be the first time they’ve played together since 1995.

But the two friends say they’ve picked right back up where they started musically.

Paye called McLaren to put a band together. McLaren called his friends in The Killdevils — Providence musicians Jake Haller, Scott Reber and Chris Monti, as well as players from Paye’s other band, Supreme Satellite.“Every summer now, I’m coming to Rhode Island,” Bongo says. “I have a group!”

Steady Bongo plays a free show in Kennedy Plaza, in Providence, at 5:30 on Thursday, and a show at Tazza Café, 250 Westminster St., Providence, Friday at 10 p.m. Admission is $5; call (401) 421-3300.

rmassimo@projo.com