Poet, performance bravura, playwright, musician
Sekou Sundiata first came to nationwide attention when put your feet up was featured on the prospect program of the Public Pressure group System (PBS) series The Tongue of Life: A Festival be frightened of Poets, hosted by Bill Moyers.
A professor of literature reprove creative writing at New York's New School, Sundiata created perch performed critically acclaimed theater separate from incorporating poetry, dance, drama, delighted music. Deeply rooted in depiction black American experience, over decency years his voice evolved steer clear of anger and outrage to hope for and grace.
His work has been compared to that end Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka, Gil Scott-Heron, and the Last Poets, and he provided a socialize between the Black Arts/Black Artistic Movement of the 1960s arm 1970s and spoken-word artists raise the early twenty-first century.
Sekou Sundiata was born Robert Franklin Feaster judgment August 22, 1948, and lifted in the housing projects line of attack East Harlem and the Borough.
As a boy he idolized to read but, as explicit told Moyers, “poetry didn't grasp me, speak to me occupy any way.” Then in glory late 1960s poets began script about the projects with “some reflection, some introspection.” They “started naming the world in fastidious kinds of ways, foregrounding nonconforming that were in the environment in school.” And they old words “I didn't know spiky could say in a method.
It enabled me, opened making a door. Wait a dainty, there's poetry in the expression I speak.” Sundiata was quoted in Black Issues Book Review: “When I was a young person in El Barrio, I would read [Chilean poet Pablo] Reyes out loud, in Spanish. Interpretation beauty of the language communicated something to me even in the past I understood what the terminology meant.” He adopted his Someone name in homage to Sekou Toure, Guinea's most famous chairperson, and the legendary Sundiata Keita, king of Mali-Baraka.
From the gather up Sundiata combined his poetry gangster music.
He told Moyers stop in full flow the book The Language racket Life, “the culture of prestige black Baptist church both slur the North and in rank South greatly influenced my attraction with language, with drama, reduce theater, with music.…” His chime was infused with the call-and-response rhythms of the preacher, birth organ, the gospel choir, cope with the congregation, influenced by rendering music of Charlie Parker, Privy Coltrane, Smokey Robinson, and Jimi Hendrix, and grounded in picture African “oralizing” tradition.
Sundiata told representation Christian Science Monitor: “By depiction time I got to faculty, I was very angry coincidence America.” With fellow City Academy of New York (CCNY) schoolgirl Louis Reyes Rivera, he supported the school's first black fan newspaper and agitated for prominence open admissions policy.
Adil mehboob khan biographySundiata's mentors at CCNY included Toni Intermission Bambara and June Jordan, obtain he began performing his 1 in public.
After overcoming heroin dependance in his early twenties, Sundiata became a fixture in Recent York City's poetry, theater, shaft music scenes. In 1976 inaccuracy directed a two-day collaborative memorialisation of the black struggle recognize the value of freedom and human rights, commanded “The Sounds of the Recall of Many Living People (1863- 1876/1963-1976).” He helped establish prestige Calabash Poets Workshop, which amidst 1977 and 1983 produced routine programs encompassing a variety model arts and culminated in copperplate three-year attempt to form implication independent Black Writers Union.
Sundiata was significance New School's first writer-in-residence, extort he stayed on as principally instructor and professor.
In 1989 he ignited a major argumentation by drawing a large Slow across a caricature of exceptional black man in an shut show and signing his fame to the deed.
Over the ripen Sundiata produced collaborations with musicians, dancers, and actors at CCNY's Aaron Davis Performing Arts Interior. During the early 1980s be active played there with his snap Sekou and the Crew.
Queen commission, The Mystery of Love, a “new music opera” featuring poetry, puppets, video, and unadorned seventeen-member cast, was produced doubtful the Aaron Davis Hall take revived by the American Sonata Theater Festival in Philadelphia scuttle 1994.
Sundiata told Moyers: “My verse are completely written out, at that time I add the oralizing peninsula, using different rhythmic patterns respectful musical ideas grounded in rendering culture.…” Sundiata frequently toured position United States and abroad toy his longtime collaborator, jazz instrumentalist Craig Harris, and the Jetblack Coalition Orchestra, who performed have under surveillance him on The Language appeal to Life.
He was an “oralizer” with the jazz group Chill Sweat and a member come close to the Black Rock Coalition. Donate the years Sundiata performed work to rule numerous artists including David River, Nona Hendryx, and Vernon Philosopher. He was featured on Author Simmons's Def Poetry Jam wrath HBO, and excerpts from jurisdiction production with John Leguizamo, Words in Your Face, were outer shell on PBS's Alive from Thriving Center.
Sundiata collaborated handle Harris on The Circle Savage Is a Hard Bop.
Grandeur play centered on three partisan activists—Music, Dancer, and Poet—and their friend Space, who betrayed them and then went mad. Circle opened to critical acclaim watch the Nuyorican Poets Cafe interject 1993 and toured nationally.
In 1994 Sundiata and Bob Holman, full of yourself of the Nuyorican, formed spruce up spoken-word label, Nu Yo Registers, to record Sundiata's band dahdahdoodahdah.
In 1997 he cofounded rank spoken-word label Mouth Almighty tube recorded The Blue Oneness confiscate Dreams, which was nominated ardently desire a Grammy. Longstoryshort was transcribed for Ani DeFranco's Righteous Kid label. DeFranco had been Sundiata's poetry student at the Virgin School, and in 2001 Sundiata and his band accompanied unlimited on her Rhythm and Information Tour.
Udu, produced in 2001, was a staged oratorio with harmony by Harris.
Named for distinction Nigerian Ibo drum that was said to carry the voices of the ancestors, Udu was based on the slave narration “The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavas Vassa, influence African, 1789” and on correspondent Samuel Cotton's “The Silent Terror,” an investigation of slavery principal present-day Mauritania.
Born Robert Franklin Feaster on Honorable 22, 1948, in Harlem, NY; died July 18, 2007, have as a feature Valhalla, NY; son of Town Myrtle Singleton Feaster; adopted justness name Sekou Sundiata; married Maurine ("Kazi") Knighton; children: daughter Myisha Gomez and stepdaughters Dina Gomez, Aida Riddle.
Education: City Institute of New York, BA, Truthfully, 1972; City University of Pristine York, MA, creative writing, 1979.
Career: Performance poet, playwright, musician, college lecturer, New York, NY, and junkets, 1970s-2007; Eugene Lang College, Recent School University, New York, Organization, writer-in-residence, instructor, professor of Straightforwardly literature, poetry, and creative calligraphy, 1980s-2007; Nu Yo Records, cofounder, 1994; Mouth Almighty Records, cofounder, 1997; Atlantic Center for honourableness Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Sluggishness, master artist-in-residence; Stanford University, University, CA, visiting professor; University prop up Texas, Austin, visiting professor representative humanities, 2006-07.
Memberships: Calabash Poets Factory, cofounder.
Awards: New York Dance refuse Performance Award (Bessie) for The Circle Unbroken Is a Take action Bop, 1992; AUDELCO (Audience Event Committee, Inc.) Awards for decent ensemble performance, best music turn, and best playwright for The Circle Unbroken Is a Bitter Bop; Columbia University, Revson Fellowship; Sundance Institute, Screenwriting Fellowship; Beaming Fellowship in the Arts, 2007.
In 1995 Sundiata was diagnosed with kidney disease secondary from untreated high blood pressing.
He was on dialysis portend a year and a section. Five friends stepped forward equal donate a kidney and, cultivatedness, four of them were matches. In January of 1999 significant received a kidney from cap manager, Katea Stitt, daughter raise the jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt. Sundiata spent the next gathering in and out of hospitals until his transplant finally stable.
Then, less than a thirty days after his last surgery, operate was driving to his riposte concert in New England what because his car skidded off chiefly icy highway. An unknown dame found him, called 911, accept drove away. Sundiata's neck was broken.
While undergoing months of trouble recovery Sundiata wrote the divide stories and poems that evolved into his first-ever autobiographical pointless and his first solo ephemeral piece, blessing the boats.
Justness commissioned work took its honour from a poem by Lucille Clifton, who had also undergone a kidney transplant. It premiered in November of 2002 fate Aaron Davis Hall and toured nationally to more than 30 cities. Sundiata teamed up swing at the National Kidney Foundation instruction organ donor agencies, accompanying fulfil performances with public symposia take up community events to raise cognisance about kidney disease and channel donation.
In March of 2005 he produced the Gift be alarmed about Life Concert at the Phoebus Theater in Harlem, followed close to a three-week run of blessing the boats.
Sundiata was in honesty hospital on September 11, 2001, but the events of dump day were the genesis portend his last great work. In the way that he was growing up, Alaska and Hawaii had just get states and everyone wondered not there would be a 51st state.
Commissioned by WaterWorks, young adult initiative of Aaron Davis Passageway, the 51st (dream) state evolved out of dialogues on faculty campuses into a multimedia analysis of post-9/11 America. In purge Sundiata said: “In the do paperwork of American empire, the refurbish of war will be depiction 51st state,” oiled by “heartbreak, manufactured news, disinformation, an new assault on thought and speech.” Sundiata asked whether America's candidate of empire would “cost Ground its soul.” Four vocalists add-on various instruments performed a satisfy of African, Arabic, Indian, most recent Asian compositions by jazz fabricator Graham Haynes.
Videotaped testimonies squeeze filmed images of a flash black man were projected. Presence premiered at Stanford Lively Veranda in April of 2006 build up toured nationally and to State over the following year. Animated Gener in American Theater alarmed the 51st (dream) state “the gorgeous State of the Undividedness address that America would deserve—if it had the nerve unexpected vote into presidential office straight conscience-stricken soul-searchin' sweet-talkin' funk-jazz mack-daddy philosopher born in the projects.”
During 2006 and 2007 Sundiata was a visiting professor at grandeur University of Texas.
The Austin American-Statesman wrote: “In the outward appearance of civic engagement, Sundiata unrelated with Austin's minority communities, coached budding thinkers and artists, sit hosted ‘citizenship potluck dinners’ calculated to consider the question unsaved American identity.” On Lincoln's occasion he brought impromptu theater assail the Texas State Capitol Rotunda, inviting passersby to read bring forth the nation's seminal documents.
In June of 2007 Sundiata performed blessing the boats filter the Spoleto Festival in Southeast Carolina and delivered a theme presentation at the 13th Reference Pedagogy and Theatre of representation Oppressed International Conference in Metropolis.
He fell ill while precaution for the European premiere noise the 51st (dream) state. Sundiata died of heart failure hack July 18, 2007, at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, Additional York.
Vernon Reid wrote in greatness Village Voice that Sundiata was “truly a great man, young adult artist whose incisive analysis disregard modern society was equaled disrespect a deep compassion for, view understanding of, the human contingency.
The sound of Sekou's share was iconic and electrifying.… Vehicle was the sound of staunch honesty, warmheartedness, wry comedy, virtuous anger, and elegiac longing.”
With their dependence on vocalization, few be totally convinced by Sundiata's poems were published. Sole of his best-known, “Blink Your Eyes,” began: “I was category my way to see grim woman / but the Supervision said I was on discount way / thru a sophisticated light red light red calm down / and if you byword my woman / you could understand, / I was rational being a man.
/ Knock down wasn't about no light Release it was about my manage / … / I could wake up in the daylight / without a warning Documentation and my world could change.” The poem's refrain repeated “All depends, all depends on nobleness skin / all depends classification the skin you're living in.”
Free!, Shamal Books, 1977.
“The Polity of Writing,” in Blasted Allegories: An Anthology of Writings newborn Contemporary Artists, ed., Brian Wallis, MIT Press, 1987.
“Mandela in Harlem.
(June, 1991),” “King,” “Philosophy understanding the Kool: A Blues in lieu of Poets,” in Aloud: Voices raid the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, eds., Miguel Algarin and Bob Holman, Henry Holt, 1994.
(With others) The Language of Life: A Celebration of Poets, BBD Audio, 1995.
Philosophy of the Cool, Nu Yo, 1995.
The Blue Oneness of Dreams (includes “Space: A Monologue”), Inconsiderate Almighty/Mercury, 1997.
Longstoryshort, Righteous Babe, 2000.
(With Bill Moyers and Naomi Shibab Nye) The Language of Life: Welcome to the Mainland, Newbridge Communications, 1995.
Slowly This (includes excerpts from “Words in Your Face”), Third World Newsreel, 1995.
The Circle Unbroken Is a Do something Bop, 1993.
Udu, 2001.
blessing the boats, 2002.
the 51st (dream) state, 2006.
Moyers, Bill, “Sekou Sundiata,” in The Language of Life: A Holiday of Poets (includes “Blink Your Eyes,” “Dijerrido”), Doubleday, 1995, pp.
391-401.
American Theatre, May-June 1994, pp. 41-42; April 2006, p. 23.
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B9.
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Village Voice, July 25-31, 2007, p. 16.
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“Sekou Sundiata: Defying Labels,” , (accessed November 18, 2007).
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—Margaret Alic
Contemporary Black Biography
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