In 1994, Louis Bellemare founded the SAMAJAM Percussion School. Every week, classes in African, Brazilian and Latin percussion and Gumboot percussive dance are offered to adults and children. Over the years, the private school has grown to become the largest percussion school in Canada, with a large team of teachers and animators from diverse cultural backgrounds, welcoming up to 800 participants per week and offering stage and TV performances.

With extensive business management experience in the entertainment industry, our founder and the Samajam team combined these two areas of expertise – business knowledge and a passion for collective percussion playing – to position themselves in a new market: the Team Building SAMAJAM. They quickly became leaders in this field. This unique experience offers corporate audiences a variety of percussion instruments to learn quickly and play actively, responding to specific collective challenges. SAMAJAM has produced up to 400 annual productions in this field, in addition to participatory music evenings, drum circles, sports event entertainment, product launches, and bespoke shows.

Parallel to this, SAMAJAM has created several youth projects, including the SAMAJAM School Perseverance Project, which was financially supported by the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal and various business partners, actively involved over 19,000 children over a six-year period through participatory musical activities in schools, childcare centers, and camps.

A major milestone was the creation of their first full-length school show: Rythmo SAMAJAM, which has racked up record-breaking school tours across Canada, not to mention festivals and other major public events.

In 2016, Louis Bellemare moved permanently to Asia, where in 2017 he created an ambitious new children’s show for the international touring market: SAMAJAM > YOU are the Show. This innovative production quickly gained immense popularity in China, becoming the most popular foreign show ever presented in the country. The phenomenal success led to up to six teams of artists touring the country simultaneously in the following years. The success and enthusiasm around the show acted as a catalyst, propelling SAMAJAM > YOU are the Show to embark on world tours, captivating audiences and spreading the joy of participatory music across continents.

In 2023, after more than 1,500 performances and 1 million tickets sold worldwide, SAMAJAM > YOU are the Show is the number 1 participatory music show touring the world.