Mark Allen Stone

Haruna Walusimbi is a royal musician, Grammy Award winning instrumentalist, vocalist, and dancer from Uganda. He is one of Uganda’s most celebrated artists, with extensive performance and teaching experience. Mark Stone is an acclaimed percussionist and music educator from Michigan. He was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at Makerere University in Uganda and is currently Professor of World Music at Oakland University in the U.S. (Please see complete bios below.) Walusimbi and Stone have performed together since 1997, presenting moving concerts and enlightening educational programs featuring ngoma repertoire of Uganda and new music rooted within the ngoma tradition. As an expert dancer, singer, and performer of the endingidi fiddle, akogo kalimba, enkwanzi panpipes, embaire xylophone, ntongooli harp, ebigwala trumpet, and many types of drums, Haruna Walusimbi truly embodies the holistic nature of traditional East African music. Mark Stone’s extensive background as a composer and performer of multiple African and American percussion instruments including the new array mbira brings a contemporary global dimension to the duo’s performances. Walusimbi and Stone have performed and taught together at concert venues and universities throughout the United States, Uganda, and South Africa.

In 2017, Walusimbi and Stone took part in Education Africa’s International Marimba and Steelpan Festival, the largest marimba festival in the world, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Together they served as international adjudicators for the event, and also presented festival performances/workshops. 

Walusimbi and Stone have also recorded together. Examples of their work is found below begining with the traditional Basoga composition “Twalibamukwano” with Stone on the array mbira and Walusimbi on the endingidi fiddle and kisoga drums.

Walusimbi and Stone are also both composer. Haruna Walusimbi’s original composition “Atenga Omwana” sung by Walusimbi, with Stone and Walusimbi on the akogo kalimba and Stone on the gyil xylophone can be heard below.

Mark Stone’s original composition “Kakaire”, featuring Stone playing the akogo and Walusimbi playing the endingidi  can be heard below.

Haruna Walusimbi (bio)

Deeply rooted in Ugandan traditions as a royal musician of the Busoga and Buganda kingdoms, Haruna Walusimbi is a celebrated master of Ugandan musical arts. Walusimbi was born in 1965 in the village of Lwanika in Uganda, where he grew up surrounded by the rural music performed at funerals, marriage ceremonies, and other social gatherings. He excelled in the many diverse music traditions that thrived in his Busoga village and, as result, was selected as the Global Youth Earth Day Ambassador for Africa, later winning the Global Youth Earth Day Ambassadors Competition in the Philippines. After completing university, Walusimbi founded Nile Beat Artists, widely considered to be one of Uganda’s foremost performing arts troupes. He also created the Senator National Cultural Festival, which grew to become one of the largest annual cultural events in Uganda.

In addition to his many accomplishments in Uganda, Haruna Walusimbi has achieved international renown as an educator, musician, and actor. He performed a leading role in the film Throw Down Your Heart, produced by American banjo legend Bela Fleck. Walusimbi subsequently worked with Fleck on the audio recording Throw Down Your Heart: Tales from the Acoustic Planet Vol. 3: Africa Sessions,which won a Grammy Award in 2010 for Best Contemporary World Music Album and Best Pop Instrumental Performance. He also acted in the Academy Award Winning film, The Last King of Scotland, starring Forest Whitaker. In addition, Walusimbi was a featured performer at the Percussive Artist Society International Conference in 2019. Haruna Walusimbi has extensive experience in Uganda’s music, dance, and theatrical traditions and stands out as one of his country’s greatest living cultural treasures.

Mark Stone (bio)

Prof Mark Allen Stone, Gɔba is an improviser-composer and performer-scholar with a passion for using music to bring diverse communities together. An internationally recognized percussionist, he has performed with the foremost musicians of Uganda, Ghana, South Africa, India, Trinidad, Ecuador, Brazil, and the United States. Also, an accomplished composer and improviser, Stone leads the Stone Sound Collective. His original musical style results from innovative performance practice rooted in knowledge of multiple world traditions. Through his dedication to the study of Dagara Gyil music, the Gyil Gɔba elders of Hiineteng, Ghana honored him with the title of "Gyil Gɔba" in recognition of his 2016 completion of the Gyil Gɔba initiation.

Stone was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at Makerere University, where he researched traditional Ugandan music and performed with the Nakibembe Xylophone Group. As a longtime member of the Bernard Woma Ensemble, he performed twice at the Filmua Kukur Bagr Festival in Ghana, with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center, and premiered concerti for gyil trio and orchestra with the South Dakota Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Berliner Symphoniker, and Kwazulu-Natal Philharmonic (South Africa). 

Stone is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of South Africa, where he is pursuing a transdisciplinary study of performance praxis through research in musicology, embodied cognition, and indigenous knowledge systems. He is also a featured performer/composer and on the leadership team of the newly launched South Africa/America Music Exchange (SAME). Stone is a professor at Oakland University (OU) in Michigan, USA where he directs the world music program. He created and serves as adviser for the Master of Music in World Percussion Performance and the World Music Minor. 

As an American Baha’i, Mark Stone is dedicated to promoting justice and nurturing belonging through a world embracing vision of humanity.