It’s a typical spring afternoon when I meet Chris Berry in the heart of New York’s overcrowded Garment District, a half block from the studio where his group Panjea recorded its mostrecent hybrid of African and North American sounds, Find a Way. Dressed in a brown downjacket and sporting a tote bag, the New Yorker could be any 30-something professional meeting a friend for lunch during a busy work week. For a while, it looked like his life could have gone in that direction. But since leaving his comfortable California lifestyle for Zimbabwe almost 20 years ago, Berry has overcome racism, political oppression and even cheated death on two separate occasions.

Berry’s story begins in Sebastopol, California, where the self-described “troublemaker” spent his formative years studying trumpet and listening to Rush and Depeche Mode. Sometime around Berry’s 14th birthday, a friend shoplifted a Fela Kuti cassette and, by chance, opened the teenager’s ears to African drumming. While still in his early teens, Berry began studying with African master drummer Titos Sompa, and, when he turned 18, accompanied him to Congo. “My mother was a very open-minded, ‘60s kind of person,” Berry says. “She always told me I should follow my dreams, but I didn’t have any until I heard the African drum. Titos took me to the Congo and I never came back.”

After a boat trip up the Congo River, Berry arrived in a small Zimbabwe village and began absorbing the culture and music of the country, especially a percussion instrument known as the mbira. While living in a ghetto, he met a handful of musicians and formed the first incarnation of Panjea. The group won its initial fans through hard touring but catapulted to the top of the African pop charts after scoring points in a “search for the stars” contest. Panjea became a household name, and their music video was played on television each day before the morning news. Berry married a woman with political ties, started a family and became a public figure in his adopted home.

“I came in at just the right time, immediately after white rule and suppression ended,” he says, referring to Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980 from British colonial rule as Rhodesia. “The missionaries who came before me burned their instruments and I was a white person, playing their music and learning their language.”

As Zimbabwe’s political climate became increasingly authoritarian under Robert Mugabe, Berry’s family ties placed him in a life-threatening position. “They were always suspicious of me because I was a musician with a lot of clout and I was married to the opposition leader’s daughter  First, they sent ten men with machetes to take me out—to erase me—while I was out of town. I was saved only with the help of my extended family and friends. Then I got caught in an antiwhite farmer rally while traveling to the airport with my brother-in-law and young child. They saw my skin and thought I was a farmer, pulled me from the car and tossed me to the ground. Thankfully someone recognized me from my videos, and that saved me.” Shortly after, Berry relocated his family to the United States.

At first Berry struggled to find his feet stateside. In order to pay his bills, he moonlighted as a drum instructor and became friendly with a student at one of his workshops, String Cheese Incident’s Michael Travis. The drummer in turn introduced Berry toMichael Kang, who gradually worked his way into Panjea’s framework. His association with the String Cheese Incident camp helped Panjea score a deal with SCI Fidelity, which will release Find a Way this fall.

“I tried to go to Zimbabwe a few years ago with Kang,” Berry says. “But before I left, I got the message ‘Don’t come, they are waiting for you at the airport.’” Ironically, Berry’s videos are still played every day before the morning news on government-controlled television. “They are trying to fool people into thinking they are on our side… I can’t go back there until this political regime is out.”