Homepage

Language:

Luganda

Genre:

Modern folk music Accoustic afropop

Instrument:

Thumb piano Flute Male vocals

Articles:
Article from Rootsworld

Biography

Samite is a musician and recording artist from Uganda presently making his home in Ithaca, New York. He fled Uganda as a political refugee in 1982 when his brother was brutally killed and his own life was threatened. He spent five years in Kenya, including six months in a refugee camp, before coming to the US.

In 1997 he returned to Uganda for the first time since he fled. But he did not go alone! Samite was accompanied by a video crew who filmed his homecoming as part of a one-hour documentary--"Song of the Refugee"--distributed by the Public Broadcasting Service in January 1998. The program focuses on displaced and resettled people in Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, Rwanda and Uganda.

Samite says that this project was inspired by a desire to present African refugees' hope for the future in spite of the suffering and loss they have endured. Media coverage during the darkest days of crisis in Liberia, Rwanda and Uganda concentrated on violence and destruction. With an incomplete picture, and little or no coverage of the reconciliation and healing processes now underway, it is small wonder that Africans appear helpless and hopeless to many people in the West.

Samite works a lot with projects like this one and is also the initiator of the organisation "Musicians for World harmony."

Here is his description of what he experienced in a refugee camp near the border of Congo:

"In Ruyenzi, we spent two days at a transit-receiving center where refugees were being returned from Zaire (the Congo)--including hundreds of orphans who arrived on UN cargo planes. This was perhaps the most difficult visit for me, for the returnees had seen so much suffering that they had numb, expressionless faces. The orphan children were identified with number tags around the wrists. There was an eerie silence which one does not expect with so many people assembled in one place.
The only sounds were the coughs of the sick and the shouting over the megaphones ordering people to board lorries for transporting them to new villages. The first day I was overwhelmed by the human suffering and could not bring myself to interact with anyone.

I had to return the following day after reviewing my purpose in being there and gathering my courage to initiate conversations. I concentrated on the children. I made friends with one young boy who followed me about. He spoke Swahili and told me that he was alone in the camp.
"I am on my own. I don't have a father or mother. I don't know where my brothers and sisters are. Even my best friend was killed. But guess what! I have a new friend. Would you like to meet him?" He introduced me to another boy who had experienced the same devastating losses. As we talked they asked me why we were in the camp. I told him that I had also been a refugee and we had come to film a documentary about refugees.
"But what do you do in America?" he asked. I told him I was a musician; they asked me for a song. We sat beneath the shade of a big tree where I sang for them. Other children hearing the music joined us and soon they were clapping, singing , and dancing. We traded songs back and forth--with children remembering song after song. The smiles returned to their faces, which showed me the invincibility of the human spirit. There was a fire still burning inside."

Relevant artists:
Geoffrey Orema
Hukwe Zawose
Vusi Mahlasela

DANCE MY CHILDREN
Shanachie/1990

PEARL OF AFRICA REBORN
Shanachie/1992

SILINA MUSANGO
Xenophile/1996

AFRICAN VOICES
Narada/1996

AFRICAN LULLABY
Ellipsis Art/1999

STARS TO SHARE
Windham Hills Records/1999

KAMBU ANGELS
Wind over the Earth/2001

TUNULA ENO
Triloka/2003

EMBALASASA  
Triloka/2006

"Embalasasa" is Samite's 9th album, but still my first meeting with this fine Ugandan artist. What strikes me with this album, is Samite's stage presence. This music is fairly simple, no big arrangements, no bragging, still the music and Samite's pleasant voice bring the message. Samite is obviously the kind of artist who is able to stand on stage with one simple instrument, his thumb piano or flute, and still be able to communicate directly with his audience. Because he knows his trade and has something to say.
"Embalasasa" is a quiet and lyrical album based on Samite's tribal (Baganda)musical roots in addition to some Western influences from the artist's stay in the USA since 1988. But the way Samite is uniting these influences, makes the music become his own. His is backed by an accoustic band consisting of Tony Cedras on guitar, David Cullen, guitar and bass, Mar Gueye, drums, Jeff Haynes, percussion and Angela Kalule, additional vocals. (And on two tracks also Tsi Tsi Ella Jaji on piano.) The music has some similarites to what his Ugandan fellow musician Geoffrey Orema did for Real World in the beginning of his career. One big difference, however, is that Samite makes no use of synthesizer, which, I think, is a relief.
The album opens with the title song "Embalasasa", a poetic, but serious song about AIDS, symbolically in the shape of an "embalasasa", a colourful, but poisonous lizard, that turned up in Samite's village when he was a child.
"Olusuka" is a mythological tune, played on the flute, about the creation of the earth in Baganda (?) mythology. On "Nawe okiwulira" there is a nice interplay between Samite's thumb piano and David Cullen's guitar. And of course Samite's light, but pleasant voice. It even swings!
"Kakakolo" is a rearrangement of a traditional Baganda song, played on guitar. Simple, but beautiful.
The album continues this way, very soft and careful. The problem is that it gets too soft. Like on Vusi Mahlasela's album "The Voice", one starts to wait for some contradictions and edges to this "kind" music about half way into the record. It simply becomes too sweet.
Still "Embalasesa" is an album well worth listening to.

Startpage    Artists, search    Articles and interviews    Links   

Design: Idar Lind
English: Katherine Stewart-Kreisman
Swahili: Francis Chagula (francis.chagula@malvik.kommune.no)
Swahili: Habiba Rajabu (habiba@online.no)
Flags: 3Dflags.com

This site is a member of WebRing. To browse visit here.