Ella Baker Visiting Professor
Samuel Lamontagne is a writer and professor in Music at UC Riverside. He is the 2026-27 Ella Baker Visiting Assistant Professor in the Black Studies Department at UCSB. His work explores Black music as a form of knowledge production and a site of Black intellectual and political life. Grounded in sustained engagement with musicians, archives, and community-based cultural institutions, his research and collaborative projects center histories of freedom, resistance, and imagination in the African diaspora.
His recent projects include Leave It for the Children (Angel City Press, 2026), co-edited with Darol Olu Kae, which explores the sixty-five years of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. He is also co-director, with H. Samy Alim and Tabia Shawel, of In the Hour of Chaos, a documentary covering Chuck D’s teaching at UCLA, developed alongside a companion volume published by the University of California Press (2026).
Beyond the university, his work extends into radio, archival production, and music communities, with sustained organizing with organizations like DUBLAB radio, KAOS Network, We Love Leimert, and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra.