Senie Hunt is a self-taught, singer-songwriter and percussive guitarist adopted from Sierra Leone. He brought with him an inherent passion for West African rhythms and percussion. Senie used djembe drumming as a creative outlet to process the traumas of his early childhood during Sierra Leone’s Diamond wars.
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Senie’s US family owned a world-instrument import business and shared his love of music. With the help of his adoptive father, an amateur guitarist, Senie began to play the instrument at the age of 7. He learned most of what he knows through watching footage of live concerts of early influencers, like Stevie Ray Vaughan, B.B. King, and The Allman Brothers. As he learned guitar, Senie’s rhythmic instincts led him to experiment with drumming on the guitar as a way to capture the sound and rhythms of his West African roots. His experimentation lead him to his later influences such as Tommy Emmanuel, Michael Hedges and Andy Mckee.
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As a teen, Senie attended Berklee’s summer music camp in Boston, and local music camps in New Hampshire. During college he enrolled in several music programs to understand music beyond its performance aspects. Senie quickly found that his work does not fit a traditional approach or style. After struggling to conform to the music school curriculum he left college to pursue music in his own way.
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Senie’s playing is eclectic, powerful and artfully unique. This original approach and performance style, especially his unique percussion and live looping, sets Senie apart from other acoustic guitarists. Senie composes continuously and has a large body of work for one so young. In 2020, he was awarded the Innovators award at the GSM Music Awards for his guitar mastery, and was nominated for best male act of the year by the New England Music Awards in 2021. He has featured as the opening act and shared the stage with several well established artists such as the legendary Richard Thompson, The Wailers, The Levin Brothers, Robert Randolph, The Brooks Young Band, Daby Touré and Recycled Percussions.