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Sam-Ang Sam was born January 8, 1950, in Krakor, Pursat, Cambodia. He had had no formal music training before he entered the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh at the age of 13, graduating with a Diplôme des Arts in 1970 and a Baccalauréat des Arts in 1973. Although he began to study music composition and ethnomusicology in 1974 at the University of the Philippines, the latter field under Ramon Santos and José Maceda, he earned both BA and MA degrees in Composition at Connecticut College, under Chinary Ung among others. After earning the PhD in Ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University in 1991, he taught at the University of Washington, was director of the Cambodian Network Council in Washington, DC, and in 1994 received a five-year McArthur Fellowship which supported his teaching post at Phnom Penh's restored Royal University of Fine Arts. In 1998 he was awarded a National Heritage Award by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Besides being an ethnomusicologist specializing in the music of his native Cambodia, Sam is an active performer of Cambodian classical music; his major instruments are the khloy (bamboo flute) and sralai (quadruple-reed oboe). With his wife, dancer Chan Moly Sam, he has written numerous articles and books and produced both videotapes and audio recordings, many with pedagogical purposes. Although he is an active performer and lecturer, he has also worked diligently to encourage other Cambodian musicians and dancers in the USA both to perform and transmit their arts to the younger generation; to these ends he has received numerous grants and awards.

- Grove Music Online, Terry E. Miller