David Satori
David Satori was born in Burlington, VT, on June 6, 1979. He started playing guitar at the age of 12 after hearing his brother Michael pick up the instrument. At 17 he was playing with an experimental high-school garage band called Bubble Tribe while attending Burlington High School. His brother Mike played bass, he took up drums, and the lead instrument was an electric banjo played by a neighborhood virtuoso who was interested in exploring the odder sounds the instrument could make. When he was older, he picked up his grandfather’s violin to learn Gypsy fiddle music as well as Indian and Middle Eastern styles. He discovered a connection between the music of North Africa and Mali, which fed his curiosity for world music.
After high school, Satori attended the California Institute of the Arts near Los Angeles and earned a B.A. in music performance and composition. There he was exposed to more world music, and during his last years at CIA he founded an experimental instrumental quartet called the Funnies. They toured in an “eco-bus” that ran on recycled vegetable oil, and they put out two albums, The Funnies and Masters of the Universe. In 2003, Satori moved to San Francisco to joined the ten-piece Afro-beat ensemble Aphrodesia. He toured the U.S. with them and was part of their epic trip to Nigeria, traveling West Africa in another eco-bus. The trip culminated in a performance at ~the New Shrine in Lagos, built by Femi Kuti, son of legendary Afro-beat progenitor Fela Kuti. Kuti sat in with the band and inspired its 2007 album, Lagos by Bus, which Satori produced.
In 2007, Satori was in L.A. again dating belly dancer Zoë Jakes. She introduced him to Miles Copeland, her boss at the Bellydance Superstars show. Satori produced the music for an instructional belly dance DVD by Rachel Brice. Copeland was impressed and asked about an album of modern belly dance music. Satori suggested a fusion of electronic experimental music and traditional belly dance tunes. Copeland gave him the green light and Beats Antique decamped to a recording studio to produce their first album, Tribal Derivations. The rest is history…
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