PORT ANGELES — Charles Dono Bei Ledjebgue — please call him Dono — sings in French, English and his native tongue, Kabalaye.
But this is beside the point when he and his band of brothers, H’Sao, come from their home in Montreal to Port Angeles this Thursday night.
“It doesn’t matter what language we’re singing in,” he said. “The emotion travels from place to place.”
H’Sao’s four men are originally from Chad in central Africa. But they call French Canada their home base now, even as they bring their style of music and dance across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.
The ensemble comes to the North Olympic Peninsula as part of the Juan de Fuca Foundation for the Arts’ concert series, and will take the stage of Peninsula College’s Little Theater at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 15.
Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for children age 14 and younger at www.JFFA.org, Port Book and News in Port Angeles and the Joyful Noise Music Center in Sequim.
Also Thursday, H’Sao will give an afternoon concert for students at Port Angeles’ Dry Creek Elementary School as part of the Juan de Fuca Foundation’s education initiative.
“We share our story with the kids,” Dono said. “We sing a couple of songs and we share our background,” before opening it up for questions.
“For us, this is an opportunity to meet another culture. And the kids are really interested in knowing about another country,” he finds.
It was five years ago that Dan Maguire, the Juan de Fuca Foundation’s executive director, saw H’Sao perform at a booking conference. Their show, he thought, was easily the best one there, with “a great combination,” he said, “of singing, dancing and playing music.”
H’Sao, whose name comes from a native word for the swallow that flies far and wide, has obvious African roots, Maguire said, but “they definitely have a modern soul groove.”
Dono, the son of a diplomat, grew up in China. As a kid, he listened to groups such as Boyz II Men and Bel Biv DeVoe, but when he moved back to his native Chad and met the rest of H’Sao, he delved into the sound of Africa.
This was 1995, when Dono was just 16. He and his fellow performers, brothers Caleb, Mossbass and Izra Rimtobaye, had sung in church choirs, so they knew how to blend gospel with the R&B, soul and Chadian music they had grown up with.
“We all finished school, and then we had a choice,” Dono recalled. “We could go to university or to a professional school. But there were no professional schools in our country.”
The other option: pursuing a life in music. As H’Sao, the young men were invited to tour France and then Canada.
“We really love what we do, so we stick to it,” said Dono.
Besides singing and playing guitar, he took up the drums — “because I love it,” of course.
H’Sao’s music has been called Afro-fusion and Afro-jazz, and many of the quartet’s songs are done a cappella. Caleb Rimtobaye also plays guitar; Mossbass is the bass man and Izra plays keyboard, and “he’s a pretty good dancer,” added Dono.
True to the men’s Chadian roots, dance is an inextricable part of a H’Sao performance. There’s that international language again, offered alongside songs flavored with Arabic and the African tongue Sara.
H’Sao is touring in support of its album, “Oria,” whose tracks include a treatment of the Bob Marley classic “One Love.”
Songs about peace, struggle, politics, religion and social justice also are part of the effort.
After Port Angeles, H’Sao will head south for a Jan. 17 concert at the Los Angeles Music Center and then up to Minneapolis’ Cedar Cultural Center for a show Jan. 20.
“There is nothing more interesting for me than traveling,” Dono said. “You see the world differently when you have an opportunity to do what we do.”
He does not take it for granted. In this unpredictable music business, the traveling could end any time, so Dono and the band are fully immersed in the flow of it.
To those who are on the fence about Thursday’s concert, Dono has an invitation.
Come with an open mind, open for a style of music unlike any you’ve heard.
It’s “a different type of travel,” he said.
