Sekou Sundiata - R.I.P.

[Lois Gilbert]

Yesterday, after a series of unconfirmed reports that the great writer, spoken-word artist, and educator Sekou Sundiata was in grave condition and on life support in a Westchester hospital after two heart attacks, I received a message that he had left this life on Wednesday (yesterday) morning. This message came from a third party but included his partner's correct name and their correct address, so it seems we have to believe it is true now. The message said: "On behalf of Sekou and his family, thank you all for your expressions of love and support and for your prayers. Cards can be sent to 296 Stuyvesant Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11221. Details regarding funeral arrangements and donations will be forthcoming. Maurine (Kazi) Knighton."

Blues, jazz, funk, and Afro-Caribbean percussion surrounded the soulful voice of Harlem-born poet Sekou Sundiata on his recordings "The Blue Oneness of Dreams" (on the Mouth Almighty label) and "Longstoryshort" (Righteous Babe). His words speak of black culture and tradition, often with a political edge. "People be droppin' 'revolution' like it was a pick-up line," he says in "Longstoryshort." "You wouldn't use that word if you knew what it meant."

Sekou Sundiata recorded and performed his poetry with such renowned musicians as Craig Harris, Nona Hendryx, David Murray, and Vernon Reid, as well as with Henry Grimes in duo at the Vision Festival of 2OO6. Sekou's plays include "A Circle Unbroken Is a Hard Bop," "The Mystery of Love," and "Udu." Mr. Sundiata was a Sundance Institute Screenwriting Fellow, a Columbia University Revson Fellow, a Master Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, the first Writer-in-Residence at the New School University in New York, and a professor at Eugene Lang College.

Among his students was folk-rocker Ani DiFranco, whose Righteous Babe label released Sekou's CD "Longstoryshort." DiFranco has said that Sekou Sundiata "taught me everything I know about poetry," and the two performed together in 23 cities during her Rhythm and News Tour in 2OO1. In 2OO3, Sundiata toured the U.S. again, performing his one-man theatrical piece "Blessing the Boats," a chronicle of his five-year battle with kidney failure, blending monologues, readings, stand up comedy, spoken word, and storytelling, with recorded music and video projections. The poet's latest theatrical piece, "the 51st (dream) state," is a multi-media music-theater performance, Sekou Sundiata's contemplation of America's national identity, its power in the world, and its guiding mythologies. He has also been featured twice on Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam on HBO.

Television journalist Bill Moyers, who featured Sekou Sundiata in the PBS series on poetry, The Language of Life, has said of Sekou that his work "comes from so many places it is impossible to name them all. But I will wager that if we could trace their common origin, we'd arrive at the headwaters of the soul. Listen carefully and he'll take you there." Writes Amiri Baraka: "Sekou is one of the most distinctive and original DJALI (Poet, Historian, Musician Signifier) doing it. Sekou is Pre-Griot, meaning in the ancient tradition of 'The Gleeman.' Serious as light overhead in darkness."



A few links for Sekou Sundiata:

www.righteousbabe.com/artists/sekou/index.asp

http://www.multiartsprojects.com/art...&sectionid=134

www.newschool.edu/lang/faculty.aspx?id=1776

www.salon.com/audio/2000/10/05/sundiata

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4561097

http://kadmusarts.com/blog/?p=303

[Lois Gilbert]

On Wednesday, July 18, 2007, at 5:47a.m. (ET), poet Sekou Sundiata passed away. A highly esteemed performing poet, Mr. Sundiata wrote for print, performance, music and theater. Born Robert Franklin Feaster in Harlem, on August 22, 1948, Sundiata came of age as an artist during the Black Arts/Black Aesthetic movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

While attending the City College of New York (CCNY), where he began reciting poetry publicly, Sundiata converged with several other student activists, including once-mayoral candidate of Pittsburgh and longtime friend, Leroy Hodge, to form the basis for what soon became known as the Black and Puerto Rican Student Community of City College (BPRSC). This phalanx of 400 students soon made their own history, closing the 21,000-student campus during the Spring of 1969, to demand, among other things, that CCNY be renamed Harlem University. The net effect of the student takeover culminated in both an Open Admissions Policy that took effect in September 1970, the full legitimization of ethnic studies departments throughout the nation, as well as the requirement that all education majors within the City University take courses in African American History and to have Spanish as a Second Language.

Among his acknowledged mentors at City were Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, and fellow student Louis Reyes Rivera, with whom Sundiata helped to establish the first Black student newspaper in the City University, CCNY's The Paper. Their association would span close to forty years of mutual respect and admiration.

Upon completing his Bachelor's Degree (circa 1974), Sundiata enrolled and completed his Master's in Creative Writing while regularly producing community-based poetry readings that were known to draw SRO crowds. In 1976, his creative sensibilities, his innate organizing skills, and his associations with a convergent generation of excellent poets, musicians and dancers immediately led to a collaborative project he directed that would commemorate 100 years of Black struggle for freedom and Human Rights. Titled The Sounds of the Memory of Many Living People (1863-1876/ 1963-1976) , this production, which included upcoming novelist Arthur Flowers and such poets as Safiya Henderson-Holmes, BJ Ashanti, Tom Mitchelson, Louis Reyes Rivera, et al, was staged in Harlem over a period of two days, signaling much of what was to come from Sekou's sense of vision, steadily breaking ground for what was then a new literary genre,
Performance Poetry, fully anticipating elements of both Hip Hop Culture and Spoken Word Art.

In 1977, the aforementioned poets, along with Zizwe Ngafua, Rashidah Ismaili, Fatisha (Hutson), Sandra Maria Esteves, Akua Lezli Hope, Mervyn Taylor, and Sekou, among others, formed the Calabash Poets Workshop, which group signaled the arrival of a new literary heat in New York, regularly producing soirees and forums (1977-1983) that included all of the arts and culminated in a three-year attempt (1979-1982) to establish an independent Black Writers Union.

Upon the release of his first vinyl album (circa 1980), Are & Be, Sekou Sundiata was dubbed by Amiri Baraka as "the State of the Art." Since then, Mr. Sundiata established a longtime relationship with CCNY's Aaron Davis Performing Arts Center, through which venue he intermittently produced new material for the stage, consistently collaborating with musicians, dancers and actors. He was eventually selected for a number of earned fellowships, including a Sundance Institute Screenwriting Fellow, a Columbia University Revson Fellow, a Master Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida), and as the first Writer-in-Residence at the New School University in New York, in which university's Eugene Lang College he remained a professor.

He was, as well, among those featured in the Bill Moyers' PBS series on poetry, The Language of Life, and in Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam on HBO.

Among several highly acclaimed performance theater works in which he served as both author and performer are: The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop, which toured nationally and received three AUDELCO Awards and a BESSIE Award; The Mystery of Love, commissioned and produced by New Voices/ New Visions at Aaron Davis Hall in New York City and the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia; and Udu, a music theater work produced by 651 ARTS in Brooklyn and presented by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, the Walker Art Center and Penumbra Theater in Minneapolis, Flynn Center in Burlington, VT, the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and Miami-Dade Community College in Florida. Throughout this period and since 1985, he developed a close association with co-collaborator and legendary trombonist Craig S. Harris.

blessing the boats, Sundiata's first solo theater piece, an exploration into his own personal battles with kidney failure, opened in November 2002 at Aaron Davis Hall, NYC. It has since been presented in more than 30 cities and continued to tour nationally. In March 2005, Sundiata produced The Gift of Life Concert, an organ donation public awareness event at the Apollo Theater that kicked off a three-week run of blessing the boats at the Apollo's SoundStage. in partnership with the Apollo Theater Foundation, the National Kidney Foundation and the New York Organ Donor Network with support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Since 2006, his the 51st (dream) state has been presented throughout the U.S. and in Australia. Both blessing the boats and the 51st (dream) state were produced in collaboration with MultiArts Projects and Productions (MAPP). In addition to working within community engagement activities at Harlem Stages/Aaron Davis Hall, the University of Michigan and University Musical Society (Ann Arbor, MI), the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC), the University of Texas Austin (Austin, TX), in Miami Dade College (Miami, FL), and the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, Sundiata has appeared as a featured speaker and artist at the Imagining America Conference (Ann Arbor, MI), at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), and at the Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Conference (Minneapolis, MN), among others. Prior to his demise, he was engaged in producing a DVD documenting the America Project for use by universities and presenters as a model for art and civic engagement.

In addition to the 1979 Are & Be album, Sundiata's other releases include a second album, The Sounds of the Memory of Many Living People, and two CDs, The Blue Oneness of Dreams, nominated for a Grammy Award, and longstoryshort. Each of these works are rich with the sounds of blues, funk, jazz and African and Afro-Caribbean percussion, with the latter two featuring Craig Harris.

He is survived by his mother, Virginia Myrtle Feaster, his wife, Maurine Knighton, daughter Myisha Gomez, stepdaughter Aida Riddle, grandson Aman, brothers William Walter Feaster and Ronald Eugene Feaster, as well as a host of relatives, admirers, students and friends.

A private funeral service of family and friends is scheduled for Saturday, July 21, and a commemorative celebration of his life and work is scheduled to take place on August 22, his birthday, at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera House. Details to follow. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in the name of Sekou Sundiata to the New York Organ Donor Network or to the National Kidney Foundation.

[JamesH]

I have a couple of his spoken word CD's. My wife and I enjoyed them very much.

Sorry to hear the news.

[Bill Barton]

Sad news indeed. He was a remarkable talent and will be sorely missed.

[musicmargaret]

On Saturday, July 28th, Sekou Sundiata Praise Day took place at the Bowery Poetry Club from 3 to 5 p.m., with video screenings of the great Sekou, and with people reading and playing music for him, including (going alphabetically) Jennifer Alexander, Darryl Alladice, Amina and Amiri Baraka, Latasha Natasha Diggs, Henry Grimes, Bob Holman, Rashidah Ismaili, Tyhimba Jess, Patricia Spears Jones, Louis Reyes Rivera, Alhaji "Papa" Susso, Cheryl Boyce Taylor, and "T.K.O."

There will be a memorial celebration at the New School (where he taught) on Sekou's birthday, August 22nd, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th St., New York City, information 646-6O2-939O or anyanwu@igc.org.

As it says on Henry Grimes's site, Sekou Sundiata will always be a heroic figure, an inspiration, and a guiding light to us, and we mourn him deeply and will celebrate him always. Henry was blessed to have the opportunity to invite Sekou to perform duets with him in the Vision Festival of 'O6, and we were thrilled when he accepted. The performance that resulted was a revelation to all who were present, even those who already knew Sekou's (and Henry's) power.