Samuel Boateng

Dance

Samuel Boateng is a jazz pianist, composer, dancer, visual artist, filmmaker, and scholar from
Ghana. He has a Ph.D. in Jazz Studies from the University of Pittsburgh and an M.A. in
Ethnomusicology from Kent State University. Samuel’s Ph.D. research is located at the
intersections of jazz transnationalism, decolonization, critical cosmopolitanism, Black
internationalism, music communities, and intellectual property. In his current book project, The
Jazz Thing Is Great, But: Music, African Migration, Diasporic Dialogues, and Scene, he
investigates the intercultural collaborations of Ghanaian musicians in Britain, United States and
Ghana in order to unsettle traditional narratives of jazz that place Africa only in the past of the
music’s development, and he highlights the continuous and mutual influences between Africa
and the Black diaspora. In 2019, his research paper “Jazz and Contemporary Music Making in
Ghana: Making a Case for Decolonizing African Music Research” was awarded the African
Libraries Student Paper Prize through the African and African Diasporic Section of the Society
for Ethnomusicology. He is one of two recipients of the inaugural Immersive Dissertation
Research Fellowship through the Andrew Mellon Humanities Engage Program at University of
Pittsburgh, and he was also awarded an Andrew Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in 2020. In
2021 he was awarded the American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Completion
Fellowship.

As a musician, Samuel has collaborated with various bands and collectives across diverse genres
including jazz, funk, reggae, hip hop, highlife, Afrobeat, dangdut, traditional African music and
dance. He has performed at the John F. Kennedy Center, Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh,
National Theater (Ghana), Lincoln Center, and Indosiar TV (Indonesia). In 2015, he was
awarded the Outstanding Performance Award at the Elmhurst College Jazz Festival. In 2019 he
collaborated as a pianist with funk and soul legend Betty Davis on her new song “A Little Bit
Hot Tonight.” As a composer and a 2019 ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award
winner, his works have been performed by the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra, Cleveland Chamber
Symphony, Kent State Orchestra, Ion Sound, Adepa Ensemble, Hugo Cruz and Caminos,
Quartetto di Venezia, and Afro Yaqui Music Collective.

As a 2021 artist in residence at Pittsburgh’s New Hazlett Theater, and with the support of the
Heinz Endowment for the Arts, Samuel’s original musical Sunsum is Spirit—an exploration of
myth, migration, and collaboration in the African diaspora—was premiered in 2021. Samuel’s
new film, Accra Jazz Dialogues—which explores the implications of jazz beyond the borders of
the United States through conversations and performances with artists in Ghana’s jazz scene—
was premiered at the 2022 University of Pittsburgh Humanities Engage Symposium and has
since been screened in Ghana and Canada. As a dedicated teacher, Samuel has over seven years
of experience teaching music and dance courses as well as directing ensembles across various
academic levels. He has taught courses in history of jazz, jazz improvisation, African music and
dance, music theory, world music, piano and musicianship, music recording studio, and Afropop
ensemble.