college and university residencies

Samite will design a program with any of the following components:

• Students may create original compositions with Samite in a workshop setting.  They may use traditional and non-traditional sound sources including electronic instruments to create, perform and record this music with Samite.  Working with Samite will allow them to expand their performance opportunities.

• Samite will work with college and university choir directors with his original arrangements to prepare students to perform his music with him for public or private performances.

• Students will learn to perform Samite’s music in a culturally authentic manner.

• Students will improvise and create dance movements based on Samite’s music.

• Students will discuss with Samite his cultural, social, and political uses of music.

• Students will relate Samite’s music to social and historical events.

• Students will gain an understanding of the cultural features of East African music and the importance of music within Samite’s culture through his multimedia presentation and interactions with him.

• Specifically students will gain an understanding of the foods, methods of transportation, education, socialization practices, gender roles, economic activities, and housing.

• Students will understand the connectedness of their culture and those of East Africa.

• Students will learn about important historic events such as genocide and human rights violations from someone who witnessed them. Samite will speak about his experience as a former refugee and someone who lost family as a member of a targeted tribe in Uganda under the dictatorship of Milton Obote.

• Samite has also witnessed gross human rights violations under the dictatorship of Idi Amin Dada, and the effects of the Rwandan genocide during his visits there. 

• In addition Samite’s extensive travels to other war-torn countries in East and West Africa to work in refugee camps, with former child soldiers and AIDS orphans, allows him to speak of the effects of human rights violations on a large scale.