Chris Berry (Chris Berry Music)

Chris Berry's life story sounds like a Hollywood script: a white boy from CA becomes a master of African drumming and the mbira thumb piano, and with his worldbeat fusion band, Panjea, becomes an African star, selling a million albums in South Africa. Berry grew up a rock & roll kid in the northern CA town of Sebastopol, where he fell in with a group of kids who got their kicks from shoplifting. As fate would have it, one of those kids lifted a tape from a music store that turned out to be an album by Fela Kuti, and Berry became fascinated by Kuti's music, listening to it for hours on end. Fate again intervened when Berry, now 14, met African drum master Titos Sompa, who had settled in Sebastopol, and Berry became his student on the djembe. After graduating from high school, Berry accompanied Sompa to Africa, where he was sent on a ten-day boat trip up the Congo River to a village where he received further drum instruction. Check out Flow Fest Hawai'i, March 27-29, 2026 on Big Island!