Robert Mwamba

Robert Mwamba was born in Zambia started his career as a guitarist. While attending Baruch College in New York, Mwamba’s musical career started heating up.  He came under the tutelage of legendary bassist Milt “The Judge” Hinton and the bassist widely regarded as the most recorded musician in history took him under his wings. After graduating from Baruch College with a double major in Finance and Economics, he joined Bank of America working in Management and Investments.

Like just about everybody, I’ve always loved music since my childhood. In my case though, there really wasn’t a    “Eureka” moment if you will – it was a gradual evolution where the music slowly drew me in. I had so many other safer or more secure options and even people in my own family would ask why I wasting my time in such an insecure line of work, but try as I might, I couldn’t escape the music. I was miserable without it. As one great and very wise jazz pianist told me “You don’t choose the music – the music chooses you!”

Did your upbringing in Zambia influence the way you view and play music today?

Not really, I wasn’t playing music back there. The one thing I must say though is that I come from a large family – there were 8 of us, and everyone had different musical tastes! And my father had a great record collection – so I was exposed early on to Jazz, Country, Pop, Classical, Reggae Latin, Funk, R&B…… etc – which might account for my musical openness & versatility.