Samite will design a program with any of the following components:
Samite’s school-wide multi-media performance will provide opportunities for students to experience his music instruments, rhythms and melodies of East Africa.
Students will improvise and create dance movements based on Samite’s music.
Students will learn to sing Samite’s songs and have the opportunity to play his traditional African instruments, such as the kalimba, and madinda. In addition to these instruments, Samite will sing and perform on the litungu and flute.
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.
In a residency setting, Samite will teach chorus students traditional and original African music culminating in a performance.
Students will learn to perform Samite’s music in a culturally authentic manner.
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 be entertained by Samite’s animal photographs from East Africa.
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.