LIVING LIKE A REFUGEE

Depressing music is a luxury of the middle class. If emo kids everywhere got a good look at the daily lives of Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, they’d likely rethink the whole self-loathing melodrama thing. Even though the Afro-pop collective, pictured below, formed amid one of the most dire and tragic civil wars in modern history, its music is an exaltation of the pleasures the members still have -- haunting harmonies and boisterous percussion in a jubilant reggae-folk hybrid that suggests dancing might be as powerful a weapon as a gun. 8 p.m. Sat., Royce Hall, UCLA. $22-$36. (310) 825-2101