Samora Abayomi Pinderhughes is a composer, pianist and vocalist known for large multidisciplinary projects and for his use of music to examine sociopolitical issues. Samora is the director and creator of The Transformations Suite, an acclaimed project combining music, theatre, and poetry to examine the radical history of resistance within the communities of the African Diaspora. Samora’s collaborators include Sara Bareilles, Titus Kaphar, Herbie Hancock, Glenn Ligon, Daveed Diggs, and Lalah Hathaway. He works frequently with Common on compositions for music and film, and is a featured member on the new albums, August Greene and Let Love, with Common and Robert Glasper. A Sundance Composers Lab fellow, Samora scored the award-winning documentary Whose Streets? and the Field of Vision film Concussion Protocol. He is a member of Blackout for Human Rights, the arts & social justice collective founded by Ryan Coogler and Ava DuVernay, and was musical director for their #MLKNow and #JusticeForFlint events.

Fellowship Statement

As an artist, my primary goal is to ensure that whoever experiences my work will be altered in some way that affects their daily lives; how they think and act, how they relate to others, how they consider their daily relationship to their country and world. I hope to bend the conventions of artistic genre and discipline to create pieces that deeply pierce the soul, grasping at the foundational elements of what it means to be alive in this moment. My work deeply criticizes the oppressive systems of American corporatism and colonialism, and reveals the many ways people are wounded by these systems as well as the many ways they fight back, imagining possibilities beyond what is allowed. I am a prison and police abolitionist. Current projects I'm working on include The Healing Project (about trauma & healing from incarceration and violence), Venus Smiles Not (about how traditional masculinity distorts the ways men learn how to deal with loss), and Grief, a collection of songs reflecting on the past two years. I'm honored to receive this support from the Jerome Foundation to continue my work.

Photo by Jacob Blickenstaff