The musician known as Mon Rovia has traveled from a childhood disrupted by Liberia’s civil war to a life in the United States, and ultimately to a musical career that has taken him before thousands of listeners and onto the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.
On Oct. 2, that journey brings him to St. Paul, where Mon Rovia will perform at the Palace Theatre as part of his Bloodline tour.
His beginnings were shaped by Liberia’s first civil war, which raged from 1989 to 1997. Before he was 7, Mon Rovia had been separated from his birth family, had lost the country and culture into which he was born and had joined an adoptive family on another continent whose members did not look like him.
Music came relatively late.
As a child, he moved around the United States with his family before eventually striking out on his own as a young man. While living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, his parents bought him a ukulele.
Through it, he found a voice.
His music reflects the sounds of an upbringing in the Appalachian region of the United States, but its emotional core reaches back to his earliest beginnings in Liberia. His songs have appeared on protest-song collections on music platforms.
As an adopted child, Mon Rovia drew upon a longing to understand his ancestry. But as he learned more about his birth family, he also came to understand how dramatically different his life might have been had he remained in Liberia.
His birth siblings who remained in Liberia were forced to take up weapons and fight in the war.
Mon Rovia worked through survivor’s guilt and began creating music about what could have been. His songs bear witness to a past he escaped while exploring where he fits in the country he now calls home.
Musically, his sound can sit comfortably alongside Appalachian groups such as The Watchhouse. But the stories Mon Rovia tells are distinctly his own.
He sings about Liberia’s civil war, violence committed against civilians, oppressive governments and children growing up amid war while hoping for peace.
“The more you know, the more you wish you knew less,” he sings in “To Watch the World Spin Without You.”
Another lyric, from “Crooked the Road,” is written on the soundboard of his ukulele: “but I still feel the edge and this cold knife.”
His protest music recalls the work of protest singers such as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, whose music confronted fascism and racism.
But Mon Rovia’s protest is not simply against government. It is also directed at the human tendency to “fall in love with their suffering” rather than rise above it — rejecting a helping hand and remaining wedded to misery.
Recognizing that tendency in himself, he credits friends and family with helping him break free and pursue a creative life.
Mon Rovia released the album Dark Continent in 2021, followed this year by Bloodline. He also has released several EPs.
His Bloodline tour comes to the Palace Theatre, 17 W. Seventh Place in St. Paul, on Friday, Oct. 2. The all-ages show begins at 7 p.m.
Tickets are available here.
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About Susan Budig
Susan is based in Minneapolis and reports on general assignments for Mshale with a focus on entertainment. In addition to reporting, she is also a writer, poet, teacher and coach.
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