Music is a universal language, transcending borders, cultures, race – and, yes, language, too.

This is according to Martin Toe and Destin Boy Official, the artists behind the Black History Month Unity Concert at the Bank of New Hampshire Stage this Friday.

“Music is one thing that can bring everybody together. The language doesn’t matter. It’s the way people feel about it,” Destin Boy Official said via phone. “We thought, why not come up with something we can bring to the community, to the people, to thank them for supporting us?”

The concert, which will be presented free of charge, features the New Hampshire-based artists, who are friends in real life. They met while performing at the We Are One Festival in Manchester’s Veterans Park in 2019, and today they’re like “brothers,” lending ears and ideas whenever they write new work.

“Destin is an artist who’s very versatile when it comes to the music. For me, I’ll have a track in mind, and I’ll send it to Destin,” Toe said. “He has an ability to come up with really catchy lyrics that will fit the tracks.”

The artists have different styles; Toe is an American Afropop and hip-hop artist whose latest album, “Civic Leader,” is inspired by social justice issues, many of which he sees as an organizer part of the Granite State Organizing Project. Destin Boy Official is an Afrobeats and dancehall fusion artist who says he writes about love and togetherness, music with a deep base that gets people out dancing.

Their similarities lie in their paths to here, both having settled in the Granite State after fleeing war overseas. Toe is a survivor of the Ivorian and Liberian Civil War and spent his school years in New Hampshire, graduating from Concord High School in 2014.

He says he became interested in music in the second grade while trying to get the attention of his mother’s friend, who was always listening to music. “One day, I tried to mimic the rap,” Toe said via phone. “He started calling up his friends and having me rap for them. I think they were having a blast, but some of them said, ‘Don’t stop doing it! Keep going!’ ”

So he did. He found more encouragement at school, rapping at talent shows and selling CDs he made via GarageBand to his classmates. “I was coming from a household where we spoke broken English, and I was trying to rap. I was just saying a bunch of stuff, but everybody seemed to like it,” Toe said.

Toe says he was indifferent about music in high school but was coaxed into performing as part of Friday school announcements with a couple of other students. One day, one of these students pulled him aside.

“He said, ‘I like the way you write. I like the way you put things together. You get a message across.’ That’s been something that’s always stuck with me,” Toe said. “In 2013, my junior year, I went to a church camp, and when I returned home, I got the news that he passed away. He drowned in the Merrimack River trying to save a kid. That was something that really hit home for me. I kind of picked up that mantle of making music.”

Destin Boy Official was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo but left due to war and lived with his family in Tanzania, then Kenya, which is where his musical journey began. In Kenya, he performed in a band with other refugee children, though he says he didn’t see himself as an artist at the time.

When his family immigrated to the United States in 2016, he spoke no English – only Swahili and Lingala – but the people of Manchester helped him pick up the language, and eventually, venture back into music. It was at the Boys & Girls Club that he learned to write and produce music, which is where he recorded his first song, “Wangu Forever,” featuring T’kiyah.

These days, music is a form of self-expression for him. He says there’s no better feeling than performing it live. “When you’re in the studio, you’re creating it by yourself. But when you’re on the stage, and the crowd sings, they respond to you, it feels so good,” Destin Boy Official said.

For Toe, music is a way to bring to life something that before only existed inside his head.

“The music flows out of my work. In a sense, it’s conventional with my day-to-day living, seeing what goes on in the community, in the state, around the world – I write from the place of those experiences, and I try to share a message,” Toe said. “When I’m performing, I’m bringing folks into what I was experiencing when I was creating the music. That’s the best piece of performing – you’re sharing that moment with the people listening.”

The Black History Month Unity Concert featuring Martin Toe and Destin Boy Official is this Friday, Feb. 24, at 8 p.m. (doors opening at 7 p.m.) at the Bank of NH Stage and features individual performances by each artist followed by collaborations at the end of the show. Admission is free; visit ccanh.com.

]]>