In the early 1990s, he wrote “Dance to the Bubu” for a nationwide song contest, with lyrics that proclaimed, “It’s an ancient style of music, but when you try it you never leave it.”

The judges appreciated music with local Sierra Leonean roots, and the contest led to Mr. Nabay’s first recording sessions. In his version of bubu, the patterns of the bamboo horns were transferred to keyboard and guitar, and the momentum of hand percussion was taken over by the rhythm section and a drum machine.

During the 1990s, his music spread across Sierra Leone and sold tens of thousands of cassettes as he performed in the country’s largest venues. He sang in Temne and in the Sierra Leonean lingua franca, Krio, along with English and Arabic.

The civil war that lasted from 1991 to 2002 in Sierra Leone drove Mr. Nabay’s songwriting to become more political. One of his mid-1990s hits, “Sabanoh,” called for the restoration of peaceful civilian control to counter the rebels’ chaos, declaring, “The country belongs to us.”

In some areas, rebels arrived in villages playing Mr. Nabay’s music on portable stereos to draw civilians outside to dance, then attacked. They also rewrote his lyrics with their own messages, hijacking his songs as propaganda. At one point, Mr. Nabay and his band were captured in mid-tour and forced to perform for a rebel commander.

In 2002, Mr. Nabay used an international tour to leave Sierra Leone behind, moving, by way of Guinea in West Africa, to the United States, where he rebuilt his music.