What's On

LOS ANGELES�The Skirball Cultural Center will present three concerts this March as part of its music series The Long Walk to Freedom, featuring musicians whose cultures and personal histories have been marked by a quest for liberation, justice and freedom.

On Thursday, March 1, Ugandan musician Samite, who fled his country as a political refugee in 1982 and finally settled in the United States in 1987, will perform music delivering messages of peace and cross-cultural understanding. Accompanied by guitar and percussion, and utilizing a wide range of African instruments�including the kalimba (thumb-piano), madinda (xylophone), litungu (seven-stringed Kenyan lyre) and flute�he weaves together contemporary and traditional Ugandan sounds. The Los Angeles Times says of Samite's music, "The multiple rhythms are forceful but not domineering, and Samite's melodies ride over and through them to create a soothing, almost lullaby-like effect. It's modern African folk music."

Making his L.A. premiere on Friday, March 9, Daran Kravanh is a survivor of the "killing fields"� of Cambodia whose life was spared when he came upon an accordion belonging to a soldier and was ordered by the Khmer Rouge to play for his captors. Joined by his ensemble, Kravanh will perform his music while his biographer, Bree Lafreniere, reads from her deeply touching account of Kravanh's life, Music Through the Dark: A Tale of Survival in Cambodia. Dith Pran, the Cambodian holocaust survivor whose story inspired the award-winning film The Killing Fields, says, "We are privileged to have the story of Daran Kravanh's life during the Khmer Rouge genocidal reign told so beautifully. Bree Lafreniere allows us to understand the greatness of the spirit and its ultimate triumph over darkness. This book is an extraordinary record of the Cambodian soul."

South African singer, songwriter, poet and activist Vusi Mahlasela, is an accomplished guitarist, percussionist, composer and band leader. Delivering a fresh hybrid of folk, world rhythms, blues and soul, Mahlasela's sound connects South Africa's apartheid-scarred past with its promise for a better future. Singer, songwriter and fellow South African Dave Matthews says, "Vusi has a sort of profound beauty about him. He has a light on: And that's something he would share with Bob Marley, Neil Young, Marvin Gaye or Miles Davis."� Mahlasela performs with his band at the Skirball on Friday, March 30.

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