FEATURE ARTICLE
Samite: Combining ancient and modern sounds of Africa
by Seth Rogovoy(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., March 21, 1997) -- Had Samite fulfilled his childhood dream, he might be working on airplanes for Boeing or McDonnell-Douglas instead of writing and playing music.
"I wanted to build and repair plane engines," said the singer and musician in a phone interview from his home in Ithaca, N.Y. "Being a musician wasn't really a dream, because I always had music around me. The dream was making a plane."
Instead of taking engines apart and putting them back together -- a process the native of Uganda compares to the painstaking act of composing music -- Samite wound up as a professional musician. Uganda's "unofficial musical ambassador," Samite has performed throughout the world at festivals, including the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the International Peace Festival in East Berlin, and at Woodstock '94 in upstate New York, not far from where he now lives with his wife, Joan.
Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Samite will perform his original compositions combining traditional and contemporary African and world- music influences on Friday at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown at 8, as part of the museum's "Four Fridays of Folk" series. Vocalist/percussionist Vinx will warm up the crowd for Samite. Doors open at 7; tickets are general admission. For more information call 458- 2303 x. 505.
As a young boy in Uganda Samite went to school in the King's Courtyard, where he was exposed to daily performances by the royal musicians. The king never paid much attention to the music being played, but Samite was to realize years later that the music -- traditional folk music of the Baganda tribe -- made a lasting impression on him.
Samite's grandfather taught the young boy to play the traditional flute, and his talents were noticed by a teacher in high school, who introduced Samite to Western-style flute. In the meantime, Idi Amin's harsh reign of terror was turning life in Kampala into a nightmare, and after a brother was killed, Samite fled to Kenya, where he joined bands playing jazz and Afro-pop music.
While he was a refugee in Kenya, Samite began writing his own music. "It was a difficult time, so I started writing music to relax and comfort myself," he said. "I would just play it for myself to make myself feel good. After I was encouraged to share it with other people, I found that they found the same relaxing quality I got out of it."
This was the genesis of Samite's unique fusion of traditional and modern African folk. As heard on "Silina Musango" (Xenophile), his third U.S. album, Samite's music -- played mostly on traditional African instruments with occasional guitar accompaniment -- is calm and soothing. Its energy is hidden, rather than out front as in West African drumming, with rhythm and melody dancing around each other in circular figures that suggest a kind of new-age trance-folk.
The music's ethereal quality is very much a product of its origins. "Most of my music comes through either dreams when I'm sleeping or meditative, dreamlike states when I've been playing an instrument for a long time," he said.
When the music first pours forth in this manner, Samite turns on his tape player and records it, in order to go back later on and learn it. Otherwise, he says, he would be unable to replicate it. "Once I get out of that state it would be very difficult to play it again," he said. "I have to play back the tape to find out what I did." Samite believes the music isn't just coming from himself, but is being channeled from dead ancestors and the like. "It definitely comes from somewhere," he said.
As he plays the songs for many hours, eventually something about them will remind him of something traditional -- a melody line or a lyric, perhaps -- and he will combine the traditional element with the new work to make for one of his unique fusions.
At the Clark, Samite will perform solo. In addition to flute, he plays kalimba, or thumb piano, lutungu, which is a kind of Kenyan harp, and madinda, which is a kind of marimba, or wooden xylophone.
"If I played my music for traditional people in the village, they wouldn't really understand what it is," he said. "They would think it's really weird. And then the modern people think it's something weird, too. So it really doesn't belong anywhere. It's not traditional, and it's not modern."
[This article first appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on March 21, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
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