Carisa Lee

At the age of 33, Dike Samai has be­come the first T&T na­tion­al to grad­u­ate from the New York Uni­ver­si­ty (NYU) with a Mas­ter of Mu­sic in Mu­sic The­o­ry and Com­po­si­tion: Screen Scor­ing.

“In late 2018 I was award­ed a Ful­bright Schol­ar­ship and af­ter that, I ap­plied to dif­fer­ent uni­ver­si­ties in the unit­ed states I was ac­cept­ed in­to two and I even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed on NYU,” he said.

An ac­com­plish­ment ac­cord­ing to him that was not easy, “it was tough,” but he pushed through and even grad­u­at­ed with a 3.96-grade point av­er­age.

“I think what made this en­tire sit­u­a­tion stress­ful was the fact that there were dif­fer­ent types of stress­es that were all com­ing to­geth­er at the same time and I felt like I had a heav­ier bur­den be­cause I wasn’t just rep­re­sent­ing my­self,” he said.

The San Fer­nan­do na­tive said when school closed in March, study­ing in New York City seemed sur­re­al, es­pe­cial­ly with the out­break of the virus at that time.

“We had to op­er­ate in two worlds we had to op­er­ate in an on­line world where every­thing seems to be okay­ish be­cause you’re still able to have your class and you’re still able to sub­mit your as­sign­ments but then you have the re­al world where the streets are emp­ty the place is qui­et, the on­ly thing you are hear­ing is (sic) am­bu­lances go­ing up and down the street mul­ti­ple times,” he re­called.

Samai ap­plied for an ex­emp­tion to re­turn home in May, but while he wait­ed for per­mis­sion,

an­oth­er mon­u­men­tal event took place in the Unit­ed States.

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd an African Amer­i­can was killed by white po­lice of­fi­cer Derek Chau­vin. His death re­sult­ed in sev­er­al Black Lives Mat­ter protests across the coun­try.

The T&T na­tion­al said he felt un­com­fort­able be­ing a black man in Amer­i­ca at that time.

“I wasn’t ig­no­rant of what I look like, I def­i­nite­ly wasn’t ig­no­rant of what I could be per­ceived as to oth­ers es­pe­cial­ly be­cause at that point my hair was about four feet long...I knew I had to make smarter and very de­ci­sive de­ci­sions,” he said.

He came back home in Oc­to­ber where he com­plet­ed his class­es and amid all the strug­gles grad­u­at­ed two weeks ago in a vir­tu­al cer­e­mo­ny ful­fill­ing a dream he had since his sec­ondary school days.

“I be­lieve that the sev­en years that I spent at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege San Fer­nan­do...I think that time there was def­i­nite­ly crit­i­cal in my recog­nis­ing that I like mu­sic and I’m not that bad at it,” he said.

Now he is cer­ti­fied to ma­nip­u­late mu­sic like the film com­pos­er in Har­ry Pot­ter and the Death­ly Hal­lows – Part 1 that per­suad­ed him to choose that for his Mas­ters at NYU.

“So what it ba­si­cal­ly is it teach­es you to write mu­sic for dif­fer­ent types of me­dia, whether it be film, tele­vi­sion shows, an­i­ma­tions, videos games even pod­casts,” he ex­plained.

He added some of his cul­ture to his com­po­si­tions, his work can be found on his youtube page: https://www.youtube.com/user/bad­diss74.

And if it leaves you want­i­ng more, Samai said that will soon come as he plans to share his skills here at home.