- I'm from Uganda, east Africa.

I started playing music when I was a child.

It wasn't necessarily something I wanted to do, but my father insisted.

So he found a family friend who tried to teach us to play piano, and I think he did, but he taught me how to play by ear.

So I can't actually read music.

I still can't.

♪ Stay in the fight, you won't give up your ground ♪ And for me, it was just something that I didn't necessarily have interest in.

But our community and our family is a very music-oriented family.

So we used to sing a lot together.

We used to sing in the evening, dinner time, you know, right before bed and all those things.

So I've always just kind of had a love for it.

In high school, I started playing guitar to impress a girl that I actually really liked.

And unfortunately, it didn't work out, but at least I learned how to play guitar.

(gentle guitar music) ♪ Didn't you learn to keep them out ♪ ♪ When the voices get too loud ♪ ♪ Did this swell and not come down ♪ ♪ We live for lost and found ♪ There's a lot of influences.

So my father worked for a company that kind of took us around quite a bit.

So we lived in Kenya for a while, Uganda for a while, the U.S. for a while.

And I picked up a lot of things along the way.

I think everywhere that you live informs who you are as a person.

So it's informed by the early '90s, Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson, 'cause that's the music we listened to growing up.

And then a lot of it is just kind of cultural for me, a lot of storytelling, because that's what we do in Uganda.

We sit around and tell stories, and all the stories have songs that follow them.

And for me, all of those kind of combine and inform how I write my songs and how I love to play and how I like to engage with the audience as well.

(soulful guitar music) ♪ Oh my God, should you take this away from me ♪ ♪ I might forfeit what is left of me ♪ ♪ Dramatic, yes, I know ♪ - I always want to make someone leave not the same.

I don't want them to leave the way that they came.

I want them to know that there is someone that hears you, there is someone that has gone through what you've gone through, and hopefully how they feel is full of love, full of joy, full of light, and go and past that along and spread it.

So that's really where my passion lies.

I think Milwaukee in general, I went to play a show at the Baird Center and I saw Ben Mulwana and the Village, and it said "Ben Mulwana and the Village from Milwaukee."

And I didn't correct it.

I didn't feel the need to.

I just really felt like, am I from Milwaukee?

No, but I feel like I am.

Am I from Kenosha?

No, but I feel like I am.

Am I from Wisconsin?

Absolutely not.

But I feel like I am, because all of this feels like home now.

And I think it's more than just the places or how familiar I've gotten with them, but it's the people that have made it feel just... Like how we just walked in and we just met, but I feel like I've known you guys for a little while.

We sit here and joke around a little bit in the set and I thought that's just so typical of this area, of this place and so typical of what music gets to do, gets to kind of break down all the barriers and all the things and we just kind of get to know each other at this level, and I love that.

♪ Oh, keep your head and your heart sound ♪ (gentle guitar music) ♪ Oh, walking in is the only way out ♪ (gentle guitar music concludes)