C. Samuel Peña

C. Samuel Peña is a music producer, educator, and percussionist whose work centers around building relationships through music. Samuel is the Assistant Director of Popular Music and Clinical Assistant Professor at Arizona State University in the School of Music Dance and Theatre. He has taught hip-hop and popular music in higher education and in the community for more than a decade. He founded AZ Beat Lab, a youth-centered music production organization that teaches beat making in a collaborative, process-driven approach, to provide youth in Arizona the musical instruction and opportunities that were not available while he was growing up. With an emphasis on Hip-Hop and Latin dance music and the historical contexts from which they come, he facilitates participatory beat-making and Latin percussion classes to share creative spaces with the community to gain a better understanding of how people around the world use music to communicate, connect and heal with one another. To this end, Samuel hopes to continue being a voice for building responsible communities that promote understanding and respect among various music and dance cultures.