Silina Musango

From the liner notes...

Samite, like most Africans, lives in many worlds: traditional and contemporary, urban and rural, African and Western, introspective and wildly ebullient. Although he came to age in Uganda during Idi Amin's dictatorship and lost a brother to the reign of terror, his outlook remains positive and he continues to make music that's deeply spiritual, full of love, compassion, and hope.

Samite grew up surrounded by music, some of it literally coming out of the ground. "My mother played a traditional instrument she made my selecing a young supple tree and digging a trench around it. Then she'd fashion a section of tin roofing, or a lid from a big metal can to the ground, tie one end of string to the metal and the other to the tree. By pulling on the tree and plucking the string, she would make the most beautiful sound; music that made the earth sing."

Samite's uncle and grandfather both played flute and exposed him to the recordings of Miriam Makeba, Harry Belafonte, and Barry White, and when the family began renting rooms, he spent hours with the boarders learning to play flute and kalimba.