Sam playing it again at the 39th Illawarra Folk Festival
The 39th Illawarra Folk Festival will be staged at Bulli Showground from January 16-18
By Illawarra Folk Festival Publicity Officer Nick Hartgerink
Multi-instrument folk music maestro Sam De Santi literally grew up at the annual Illawarra Folk Festival.
The 39th Illawarra Folk Festival will be staged at Bulli Showground from January 16-18, and Sam will be there as usual, performing with two top bands and in the Fiddle Frenzy.
Sam’s musician father David took on the role of Festival Director in May, 1996, and Sam was born in December the same year. David has been heavily involved ever since, so needless to say, young Sam spent a lot of his early life around folk music in general and the Illawarra Folk Festival in particular.
By the age of two Sam could play the fiddle, and when he was eight he became part of the traditional folk ensemble Wongawilli alongside his father on accordion, mother Tania (on piano), aunt Jane Brownlee (on fiddle) and other talented musicians from around the Illawarra. Tania and Jane themselves had grown up as part of their parents’ old-time dance band The Marshall Mount Merry-Makers.
Wongawilli played regularly at the Illawarra Folk Festival in the decade Sam spent with the group, and he also made regular festival appearances with the Con Artists, from the Wollongong Conservatorium of Music where Sam learned to play the trombone and performed with Eric Dunan’s Jazz Orchestra program and the BlueScope Youth Orchestra under Tanya Phillips and Higel Edwards.
Three generations of De Santis – Sam, David and David’s father Aniello (Andy) – also formed a trio to perform traditional Italian folk songs at Italian lunches that were a feature of the festival’s Friday program for a number of years. Those shows hold precious memories for Sam, as his grandfather passed away in 2020.
“Obviously my dad has been a major influence on my love of folk music, but also my mum Tania and her sister Jane,” Sam said.
Sam grew up in the Illawarra, but moved to Britain from 2016 to 2020 to study Sound Engineering at the University of West London. He kept up his folk music, playing regular gigs and linking up with other musicians at Celtic tune sessions (essentially jam sessions for folkies to get together and play traditional tunes) at pubs around London.
Now Sam is based in Brisbane, where he works as an Acoustics Engineer advising architects and builders on the best ways to soundproof buildings against traffic and mechanical noise, stadium crowds and the like. With the Olympic Games coming to Brisbane in 2032, Sam’s day job keeps him very busy.
So does his music.
On arrival in Brisbane Sam spent his spare time playing fiddle and guitar at that city’s Celtic Tunes session. In 2023 he and three other musicians decided to formalise their musical collaborations and formed a band they called Amaidi. In Amaidi, Sam plays banjo alongside Lachlan Baldwin (guitar and vocals), Jack Meimaris (accordion and stomp boxes) and Davydd McDonald (fiddle).
“We met playing Tunes, and when we started talking about forming a band I had to work out what instrument I could play that would fit in with what the other guys were already doing,” Sam said. “They already had guitar, accordion and fiddle covered so I went with banjo, which has the same tuning as the fiddle,” Sam said.
In the two years since forming, Amaidi has become one of the hottest folk bands in the country – playing all the big festivals including Woodford (twice), the National Folk Festival in Canberra, the National Celtic Folk Festival at Portarlington in Victoria (twice), Blue Mountains and Cygnet in Tasmania.
“It’s been ridiculous really … Woodford twice, Portarlington twice …,” Sam said.
The 2026 Illawarra Folk Festival will also be second time around for Amaidi, as the band played one of its early festival gigs at Bulli in January 2024.
Sam promises a very different show this January. “We’ll be louder, faster and play much harder than we did in 2024,” he promised. “We play together so much, and now we have momentum – it’s like there is no off-switch.”
When he’s not on stage with Amaidi at the Illawarra Folk Festival, Sam will play guitar with another Brisbane band, Lizzie Flynn and the Runaway Trains.
He’ll also pull out his fiddle for the Fiddle Frenzy – as the name implies a fiddle-centric concert featuring nine of the best fiddle players at the festival, scheduled for the Slacky Flat Bar on the Saturday afternoon program.
“The last time they had a Fiddle Frenzy it was in the Restaurant Bar, a small venue, and they had to turn lots of people away. This time it will be on a big stage, which will be great, so we can fit everyone,” Sam said.
