Kimati Dinizulu
Encyclopedia
Nana Kamati Dinizulu is an African percussionist. He has performed with many great artists like Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...

, Alvin Ailey
Alvin Ailey
Alvin Ailey, Jr. was an American choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York. Ailey is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th century concert dance...

, Donald McKayle
Donald McKayle
Donald McKayle is an African American modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, director and writer best known for creating socially conscious concert works during the 1950s and 60s that focus on expressing the human condition and more specifically, the black experience in America...

, Gregory Hines
Gregory Hines
Gregory Oliver Hines was an American actor, singer, dancer and choreographer.-Early years:Born in New York City, Hines and his older brother Maurice started dancing at an early age, studying with choreographer Henry LeTang...

, Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins
Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins is a Grammy-winning American jazz tenor saxophonist. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including "St...

, Nina Simone
Nina Simone
Eunice Kathleen Waymon , better known by her stage name Nina Simone , was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music...

, Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte
Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...

, Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, bandleader, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences...

, Jackie McLean
Jackie McLean
John Lenwood McLean was an American jazz alto saxophonist, composer, bandleader and educator, born in New York City.-Biography:McLean's father, John Sr., played guitar in Tiny Bradshaw's orchestra...

 and Dizzie Gillespie and many more.

Life and career

Nana Kimati Dinizulu has been playing drums and percussion instruments since his early childhood. For many generations, the Dinizulu clan has been active in music and performance. Nana Dinizulu’s father, the late Nana Opare Dinizulu was a world-respected African drummer. His mother, Alice Dinizulu, was a key dancer for Asadata Dafora
Asadata Dafora
Austin Dafora Horton widely known as Asadata Dafora was a Sierra Leonean multidisciplinary musician. He was one of the first Africans to introduce African drumming music to the United States, beginning in the early 1930s...

’s Dance Company which was the first dance company to put African dance and music on Broadway in the United States from the 1930s to the 1950s.

To gain a deeper knowledge of African traditions, as a young man, Dinizulu, traveled to Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

 where he lived and learned for two years and then he moved back to the United States. Since then, he has made over 30 trips to Africa, where he now resides part of the year. While in Ghana, he studied with expert drummers, Kofi Nabenadi, C. K. Ganyo, and Sully Emmorro. He also learned from elders of the Fanti people, master drummers whose tutelage proved invaluable in his development as a leading practitioner of African drumming. A major influence on his musical growth and creative energies was his involvement with the Fanti’s Asafo (warrior) music, a tradition dating back many centuries.

Apart from this, Mr. Dinizulu studied extensively with Haitian master drummers, Louis Celestine, Frisner Augustin, and Alphonse Cimber. He also studied various forms of traditional music from Brazil with the late Loramil Machado. Additionally, Mr. Dinizulu has studied African and African-American hand drumming with his father, Baba Chief Bey (James Hawthorne Bey), Baba Kwame Ishangi, and many others. In addition, e has conducted extensive research with the Maroons
Maroon (people)
Maroons were runaway slaves in the West Indies, Central America, South America, and North America, who formed independent settlements together...

 of Jamaica, the Ewe
Ewe
Ewe or EWE may refer to:* Ewe people, an ethnic group in Eastern part of Ghana, Benin and Togo** Ewe music, music of the Ewe people** Ewe language, the language of the Ewe people* Ewe, a female sheep...

 of Togo, the Orisha
Orisha
An Orisha is a spirit or deity that reflects one of the manifestations of Olodumare in the Yoruba spiritual or religious system....

 worshippers of Trinidad and Tobago, Rada
Rada
Rada is the term for "council" or "assembly"borrowed by Polish from the Low Franconian "Rad" and later passed into the Czech, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages....

 ritual musicians in Haiti and the Ring Shouters
Ring shout
A shout or ring shout is an ecstatic, transcendent religious ritual, first practiced by African slaves in the West Indies and the United States, in which worshipers move in a circle while shuffling and stomping their feet and clapping their hands...

 of the Georgia Sea Islands.

Mr. Dinizulu has worked with several domestic and international cultural organizations, including UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

. UNESCO declared 2004 to be the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition by the United Nations General Assembly. Mr. Dinizulu performed and lectured on endangered African-American instruments as a part of a UNESCO conference of scholars from around the world gathered at Tulane University
Tulane University
Tulane University is a private, nonsectarian research university located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States...

.

Furthermore, Mr. Kimati Dinizulu has worked with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, an organization for documenting, preserving, interpreting, and celebrating the culture and history of black people worldwide. He has performed music and conducted traditional African rituals for the Schomburg Center. He performed at the 75th anniversary celebrations of the Schomburg Center which included pouring libation for the grand opening of the “Lest We Forget: The Triumph over Slavery Exhibit”.

Kimati Dinizulu has also performed libation and drumming at “A Harlem Tribute to the Freedom Schooner Amistad”. He performed the drum rituals to help bring the Amistad
Amistad
"Amistad" is a Spanish noun meaning "friendship". It may refer to:Ships* Amistad/Amitie, an 18th century schooner that transported Acadians from France to Louisiana....

 into port in Harlem, New York.

Besides this, Mr. Dinizulu was a participant in the African-American delegation at the First Annual Emancipation Day Celebration in Ghana, Africa in 1998 which was sponsored by the government of Ghana. The African-American delegation was responsible for the re-interment of one escaped slave, Samuel Carson with a full state funeral. Emancipation Day is a remembrance of the abolition of Chattel Slavery.

The learning of drumming and African culture is a lifetime process for Mr. Dinizulu. His encyclopedic knowledge of drums, percussion, and the art of drumming comes from his worldwide travels and studies of the music of other cultures as well as his heartfelt love for music and learning. He has assembled a group of musicians from around the world, called the Kotoko Society with whom he composes and performs regularly.

Performances by Nana Kimati Dinizulu

Nana Kimati Dinizulu has made numerous worldwide performances over the past decades for many diverse groups of people.
Some of Mr. Dinizulu’s performances include Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

’s Death and the King's Horseman
Death and the King's Horseman
Death and The King's Horseman is a play by Wole Soyinka based on a real incident that took place in Nigeria during British colonial rule: the ritual suicide of the horseman of an important chief was prevented by the intervention of the colonial authorities...

 which is a play written and directed by the legendary Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...

. Mr. Dinizulu has also undertaken many other Broadway productions.
In addition, Mr. Dinizulu has worked with prominent artists such as author Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...

 in her production N’Orleans - A Storyville Musical in which he scored music for the Congo Square scene and Satchmo’s last international concert in Ghana scene. He also performed as a percussionist with Odetta
Odetta
Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals...

, Carmen de Lavallade
Carmen De Lavallade
Carmen De Lavallade is a dancer, choreographer, professor and stage and film actress.-Early Years:Carmen De Lavallade was born in Los Angeles on March 6, 1931, to Afro-Creole parents from New Orleans, Louisiana. She was raised by her aunt who owned one of the first African American history...

 and Antonio Fargas
Antonio Fargas
Antonio Juan Fargas is an American actor famous for his roles in 1970s blaxploitation movies, as well as his portrayal of Huggy Bear in the 1970s TV series Starsky and Hutch.-Biography:...

 in this production.
Moreover, Mr. Dinizulu has co-written the composition “Divining” (Judith Jamison
Judith Jamison
Judith Anna Jamison is an American dancer and choreographer, best known as the Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater....

’s first ballet for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is a modern dance company based in New York, New York. It was founded in 1958 by choreographer and dancer Alvin Ailey...

) which was a collaboration with artist/composer Monti Ellison. He was also commissioned by choreographer Judith Jamison for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to compose the music for the smash hit “Riverside”. Both of these works have toured extensively throughout the world.

In the year 2003, Mr. Dinizulu performed for the Blues Music Foundation at Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York City's Rockefeller Center. Its nickname is the Showplace of the Nation, and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city...

 in New York in the “Salute to the Blues” concert produced by Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...

 and directed by Antoine Fuqua
Antoine Fuqua
Antoine Fuqua is an American film director. He directed the film Training Day as well as Tears of the Sun, King Arthur, Shooter and Brooklyn's Finest...

 which was filmed for television broadcast. The Blues Music Foundation is a non-profit, international organization and is dedicated to the preservation of blues history and the celebration of blues excellence. Mr. Dinizulu performed with artists such as Mavis Staples
Mavis Staples
Mavis Staples is an American rhythm and blues and gospel singer, actress and civil rights activist who recorded with The Staple Singers, her family's band.-Biography:...

, Buddy Guy
Buddy Guy
George "Buddy" Guy is an American blues and jazz guitarist and singer. He is a critically acclaimed artist who has established himself as a pioneer of the Chicago blues sound, and has served as an influence to some of the most notable musicians of his generation...

, Mos Def
Mos Def
Dante Terrell Smith is an American actor and Emcee known by the stage names Mos Def and Yasiin Bey. He started his hip hop career in a group called Urban Thermo Dynamics, after which he appeared on albums by Da Bush Babees and De La Soul. With Talib Kweli, he formed the duo Black Star, which...

, and Angelique Kidjo
Angélique Kidjo
Angélique Kpasseloko Hinto Hounsinou Kandjo Manta Zogbin Kidjo, commonly known as Angélique Kidjo is a Grammy Award–winning Beninoise singer-songwriter and activist, noted for her diverse musical influences and creative music videos. Time Magazine has called her "Africa's premier diva". The BBC has...

 in this concert.

Apart from all this, Mr. Dinizulu has also performed during Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...

’s 70th Birthday Tribute. He is also an active member of UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

’s efforts to promote knowledge about the slave trade in the world and has given several lectures such as on "African-American Endangered Musical Instruments" and performances on UNESCO’s behalf.

He has also performed with the Paul Winter Consort
Paul Winter Consort
The Paul Winter Consort is an American musical group, led by soprano saxophonist Paul Winter. Founded in 1967, the group mixes elements of jazz, classical music, world music, and the sounds of animals and nature. They are often classified as new age music or "ecological jazz", and their unique...

 which combined elements from various African, Asian and South American cultures with jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

. Together they performed A Concert for the Earth which was recorded live at the General Assembly of the United Nations on World Environment Day. Mr. Dinizulu is also the percussionist in the Sonny Rollins band.

The Kotoko Society

Dinizulu established the Kotoko Society to promote traditional African music and awareness of African culture throughout the world and to continually explore musical styles from Africa, the Caribbean, Brazil, and all places where African music has found a new home. This society consists of musicians from countries such as Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, Haiti, Trinidad, Barbados, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, St. Martin, Panama, and the United States of America. The main emphasis of this society is to promote a new musical style called “Sankofa music” which has been created by Mr. Dinizulu. Sankofa is a proverbial term from the language of the Akan people
Akan people
The Akan people are an ethnic group found predominately in Ghana and The Ivory Coast. Akans are the majority in both of these countries and overall have a population of over 20 million people.The Akan speak Kwa languages-Origin and ethnogenesis:...

 of Ghana.

The traditional instruments used to perform Sankofa have been gathered from a wide variety of lands and cultures and are represented in his Kotoko Society's performances. However, Mr. Dinizulu not only uses these traditional instruments, he also continually introduces new musical instruments of his own design and construction, to complement those, which are already employed by the Kotoko Society. Playing over 500 traditional and modern instruments, the Kotoko society regularly performs at leading concert venues as well as major universities and cultural institutions. They have performed at Lincoln Center, the American Museum of Natural History, Columbia University, Medgar Evers College, Long Island University, as well as other diverse environments such as the Trump Tower and the Philadelphia Folk Festival and toured in Japan and the Caribbean. In addition to these, the group regularly appears at major nightclubs such as The Sounds of Brazil (S.O.B.’s).

Discography

  • Ancestral Spirits — Kimati Dinizulu
  • Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert
    Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert
    Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert is a 2005 live album by jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, recorded in Boston, September 15th 2001.-Track listing:#"Without a Song" — 16:37...

     — Sonny Rollins
    Sonny Rollins
    Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins is a Grammy-winning American jazz tenor saxophonist. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including "St...

  • Slavery and the Making of America — Original Soundtrack to the PBS Series
    Slavery and the Making of America
    Slavery and the Making of America is a 2004 PBS series and documentary on African American slaves and their contributions to the United States. Famous African Americans such as Colonel Tye and historical figures such as President George Washington and John Murray are all documented in the series...

  • Martin Scorsese Presents a Film — Antoine Fuqua
    Antoine Fuqua
    Antoine Fuqua is an American film director. He directed the film Training Day as well as Tears of the Sun, King Arthur, Shooter and Brooklyn's Finest...

     Lightning in a Bottle
  • Unforgivable Blackness The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson — Wynton Marsalis
    Wynton Marsalis
    Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, bandleader, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences...

  • Reeltime — Wynton Marsalis
  • Collected — Danilo Pérez
    Danilo Pérez
    Danilo Pérez is a Panamanian pianist and composer.-Early life:Danilo Pérez was born in Panama in 1965. He is considered one of the finest contemporary pianists and jazz composers of our era....

  • Lotus Flower — Steve Turre
    Steve Turre
    Steve Turre is a trombonist, recording artist, arranger, and educator. In 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2006 he won the Down Beat Reader's Poll for best trombonist....

  • New Horizons — Vanessa Rubin
    Vanessa Rubin
    Vanessa Rubin is an American jazz vocalist and composer.-Biography:Rubin was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, grew up in a musical household to parents from Trinidad and Louisiana. After achieving her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from Ohio State University...

  • Jungle Swing — Johnny Copeland
    Johnny Copeland
    Johnny Copeland was an American Texas blues guitarist and singer.-Career:Born in Haynesville, Louisiana, United States, while Copeland was becoming interested in music, he also pursued boxing, mostly as an avocation, and it is from his days as a boxer that he got his nickname "Clyde." Also as a...

  • Mental Images — Robin Eubanks
    Robin Eubanks
    Robin Eubanks is an American jazz and jazz fusion slide trombonist, the brother of guitarist Kevin Eubanks and trumpeter Duane Eubanks.-Biography:...

  • JLW — Joe Louis Walker
    Joe Louis Walker
    Joe Louis Walker, also known as JLW is an American musician, best known as a electric blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer. A feature of his work is his recourse to older material or playing styles, which revealed his knowledge of blues history.-Career:Joe Louis Walker was born in San...

  • The Journey — Danilo Pérez
  • Steve Turre — Steve Turre
  • 20th Anniversary Collection — Green Linnet
  • Don't You Know I Care — Antonio Hart
    Antonio Hart
    Antonio Hart is a jazz alto saxophonist. He attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, studied with Andy McGhee at Berklee College of Music, and has a master's degree from Queens College, City University of New York. His initial training was classical, but he switched to jazz in college...

  • Anthems — Paul Winter
    Paul Winter
    Paul Winter is an American saxophonist , and is a six-time Grammy Award nominee.- Biography :Paul Winter attended Altoona Area High School and graduated in 1957...

  • Undocumented Dancing — Pat Kilbride
  • Sanctified Shells — Steve Turre
  • A Cloud of Red Dust — Stefon Harris
    Stefon Harris
    Stefon Harris is an American jazz vibraphonist. In 1999, the Los Angeles Times called him "one of the most important young artists in jazz" who is "at the forefront of new New York music" and "much in demand as a star sideman"...

  • Love Like Fire — Rick Henly
  • Greatest Hits — Paul Winter
    Paul Winter
    Paul Winter is an American saxophonist , and is a six-time Grammy Award nominee.- Biography :Paul Winter attended Altoona Area High School and graduated in 1957...

  • Rhythm Within — Steve Turre
  • Silhouettes — Lonnie Liston Smith
    Lonnie Liston Smith
    Lonnie Liston Smith, Jr. is an American jazz, soul, and funk musician who played with important free jazz artists such as Pharoah Sanders and Miles Davis before forming Lonnie Liston Smith And The Cosmic Echoes, recording a number of albums widely regarded as classics in the fusion / Quiet Storm /...

  • Pontius Pilate's Decision — Delfeayo Marsalis
    Delfeayo Marsalis
    Delfeayo Marsalis is an American jazz trombonist and record producer.He is a member of the Marsalis family of jazz musicians: father Ellis Marsalis, Jr. , and brothers Branford Marsalis , Wynton Marsalis , and Jason Marsalis...

  • Wolf Eyes — Paul Winter
  • So Far: The Collection 1979-1995
  • 80th Anniversary — RCA Victor
  • 25 Years of Celtic Music
    Celtic music
    Celtic music is a term utilised by artists, record companies, music stores and music magazines to describe a broad grouping of musical genres that evolved out of the folk musical traditions of the Celtic people of Western Europe...

     — Various Artists
  • Wild Blue — Eileen Ivers
    Eileen Ivers
    Eileen Ivers is an Irish-American musician.Eileen Ivers was born in New York City of Irish-born parents and grew up in the Bronx. She spent summers in Ireland and took up the fiddle at the age of nine. Her teacher was the Irish fiddler Martin Mulvihill. She toured with Mick Moloney's band The...

  • Concert for the Earth — Paul Winter
  • Celtic Music Today — Various Artists
  • Joyful Noise: Celtic Favorites — Green Linnet

External links

  • http://www.kimatidinizulu.com
  • http://www.kimatidinizulu.net/blog
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