Ugandan singer-songwriter Samite has been living in Ithaca, N.Y., for the past decade, but his music remains inextricably linked to his homeland. He does it, however, his own way. And on Friday at LunaPark, he performed a set of tunes underscoring his belief in the juxtaposition of lyrical melodies against an undercurrent of surging rhythm.
Some of the material came from the new album "Stars to Share," on which Samite adds some pop-style instrumentation to his usually conservative tonal palette. But the versions performed by his three-piece ensemble at LunaPark remained within his more traditional-sounding musical dialect, emphasizing Samite's sweet-sounding voice framed by the pointillistic sounds of his mbira, a thumb piano.
