Mother Africa

Friends, if you are like me, you are on the verge of vomiting from anymore political news coming out of the clown administration in Washington D.C. It comes thick and fast everyday. The perverse surprise is that this administration’s actions actually have left no stone uncovered, no sector of our economy untouched, most human classes except the wealthy, outraged.

So, instead of focusing upon this, which might very well be the firehose needed to blast down some of the blind ignorance going on in this country around a million things, I wanted to share a beautiful treasure from last night.

I was invited by dear friends, Todd and Peg, to a small house concert of traditional African music. He is the founder of TiLT and they are both owners of the hospitality central in Taos. After a plenteous bowl of black bean posole, we sat down to an evening with Chinobay, a world class Ugandan musician. Evidently, he has special connections with the music world of Taos and Taos Pueblo, despite having visited over 75 countries in pursuit of sharing his radiant music. He lives in North Carolina with his family now, and is making a difference everyday in the schools as he brings music to children starved out of the arts. He noted that where he grew up, in a small village in Uganda, before google and X and Meta and entertainment on t.v., as a child he would sit in a circle with his peers and they would fashion all kinds of instruments out of wood and tin, animal skins, basketry, wire and plastic.

This childhood, as all childhoods do, has seeded the direction of his life as an adult. At 9 years old, he was chosen to visit Germany and share his astounding skill of not only making traditional African instruments, but his mastery of playing them with the songs of his people.

Once I heard a quote, something to the effect that if the dreamers and meditators come from Asia, and the revolutionary hearts are grown in Latin America, Mother Africa is the home of the storytellers, the griots.

And sure enough, Chinobay told us story after story after story. The stories were woven into the music he sang. He was only being true to his experience of the song and story ubiquitous in all aspects of the people’s lives where he grew up. Around the table for meals, in the fields, among the children, for celebrations, ceremonies and everyday ordinary tasks were the songs and stories bound together and rising up like a sweet scent of incense. It is what formed and shaped him.

I wrote in my journal this morning….

Chinobay’s whole countenance is joy. One thing he knows for certain is that music unites. Music heals. Music fills the soul that is downtrodden and broken with grief. Music lifts up in uncertain times of horror, pain and national darkness. He has begun a nonprofit that works with youth and children in particular from Uganda who have experienced poverty and being drafted as child soldiers.

But his music. Ah! it soars and comes as an intimate friend, wooing even the most skeptical and mean-hearted….after an evening of gentle and compelling African rhythms, with traditional instruments, rigged up to electric loopers (!) I feel some faith restored in humanity. Even as I am sickened by the diseased, angry model of white communities these days and my heart hurts by what we have conjured up as white, male dominated christian power in this country, I know this country is also Chinobay with his wife and 3 children in North Carolina. The mosaic of this country living out their lives—for music, for their children, for stories, for community—gives me hope.

Please learn more about Chinobay! Download his music from Spotify, find his non-profit, World Bridge Foundation and give generously or volunteer to bring him and his children from Uganda to your community!

Click on this link for a taste of his music.

I cherish that evening of friendship, food, stories and music. It assuaged the sorrows of loss and dismantled rage and disbelief. More multi-cultural feasting and music?

Yes please.

Anita Amstutz, Valdez, New Mexico, March 2, 2025