Jeannine Osayande, known as Mama Jeannine, is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, community folklorist, teaching artist, performer, and cultural specialist in West African, African Diaspora, and African-derived drum and dance traditions. She has studied the art of Black dance and music extensively, deepening her practice through lived experience, mentorship, performance, and ongoing engagement with traditional and contemporary forms. Her work preserves and celebrates these practices through performance, oral history, folklife documentation, participatory action research, arts education, community engagement, and social justice.

Her research documents oral histories in Swarthmore’s Historically Black Neighborhood and Philadelphia’s African drum and dance community. Working with K–14 students and community members, she uses participatory action research to center collaboration and ensure communities actively shape the recording and interpretation of their own stories. This work preserves the voices, experiences, and cultural contributions that have shaped African Diaspora traditions in the region.

Her artistic path began in 1979 in Harvard Square, where she was introduced to African drum and dance. Drawn into a dance circle, she recognized her calling. She apprenticed with and later became a principal dancer with the Art of Black Dance and Music. A later experience at DanceAfrica at the Brooklyn Academy of Music affirmed her vision, which she realized onstage in 1985.

Since then, she has integrated artistic practice, education, oral history, folkloric research, cultural preservation, and community advocacy. Her work honors ancestral traditions while ensuring African and African American culture remains living, evolving, and accessible to future generations.

Mama Jeannine is the founder and artistic director of Dunya Performing Arts Company (DunyaPAC), an arts organization grounded in arts integration, where the arts function as both teaching method and learning tool. The organization is committed to ensuring access to the beauty and brilliance of African and African American folkloric traditions.

For over 30 years, DunyaPAC has presented programs on the Black experience locally, nationally, and internationally. Through performance, storytelling, education, cultural preservation, and research, the company connects African Diaspora traditions to contemporary issues of identity, belonging, justice, and social change.

A signature program, Joy Resides Here: An Interactive Justice Journey of Oral History, Storytelling, and African Diaspora Drum and Dance Traditions, uses music, movement, and narrative to explore how Black communities draw on creativity and cultural memory to build belonging, resist oppression, affirm humanity, and express joy.

Select performances include a Creative Classroom Toolkit with videos and educator guides that extend learning through curriculum-based activities connected to performance themes.

DunyaPAC’s vision is to radiate joy through collaborative experiences that create beauty. Its mission is to enrich communities through arts, culture, and social change.

The company’s philosophy is rooted in African concepts such as polycentrism and polyrhythm. Polycentrism reflects the idea that one identity can hold multiple interconnected centers, mirroring Mama Jeannine’s multidisciplinary practice across folklore, history, research, and performance.

Polyrhythm—the layering of multiple rhythms—serves as both artistic method and philosophy of inclusion. It affirms that many voices can coexist without hierarchy, fostering connection, belonging, and shared expression. Through this framework, Mama Jeannine and DunyaPAC use rhythm, movement, and storytelling to bring communities together and support cultural understanding and social transformation.

Some of this artist’s assembly performances come with a Creative Classroom Toolkit! The Creative Classroom Toolkit is a collection of innovative educational tools that extend your in-school performances into a series of engaging, curriculum-based lessons. Included in the toolkit are artist videos, activity videos, and an educator’s guide. Contents are delivered digitally after scheduling a David Gonzalez assembly.