Sekou Sundiata
Encyclopedia
Sekou Sundiata was an African-American poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and performer, as well as a teacher at The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...

 in New York City. Famous students include musicians Ani DiFranco
Ani DiFranco
Ani DiFranco is an American Grammy Award-winning singer, guitarist, poet, and songwriter. She has released more than 20 albums, and is widely considered a feminist icon.-Biography:...

 and Mike Doughty
Mike Doughty
Mike Doughty is an American indie and alternative rock singer-songwriter. He led the band Soul Coughing in the 1990s, and in the 2000s, became a solo artist...

. His plays include The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop, The Mystery of Love, Udu, and The 51st Dream State. He also released several albums, including Longstoryshort and The Blue Oneness of Dreams. The Blue Oneness of Dreams was nominated for a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

.

His subjects included Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

, 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...

, and reparations
Reparations for slavery
Reparations for slavery is a proposal that some type of compensation should be provided to the descendants of enslaved people in the United States, in consideration of the coerced and uncompensated labor their ancestors performed over several centuries...

 for slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

.

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. He was a featured poet on two occasions,
at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival
Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival
The biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival is the largest poetry event in North America.-Background:The four-day celebrations of poetry have been called “poetry heaven” by the 1995–1997 US Poet Laureate Robert Hass, “a new Woodstock” by the Christian Science Monitor, and “Wordstock” by The...

, most recently in 2006.

Early life and education

Sekou Sundiata was born Robert Franklin Feaster in Harlem but changed his name in the late 1960s to honor his African heritage. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in English from the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

 in 1972 before successfully undertaking a master's degree in creative writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...

 from the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...

.

Performances

Sundiata's works combined poetry, music and drama. His musical influences included 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...

, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

, funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

 and Afro-Caribbean rhythms. He worked closely with Craig Harris on works such as Udu about slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

 in modern Mauritania
Mauritania
Mauritania is a country in the Maghreb and West Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the west, by Western Sahara in the north, by Algeria in the northeast, by Mali in the east and southeast, and by Senegal in the southwest...

 and The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop about African Americans reaching adulthood in the 1960s.

Sundiata based his one man show Blessing the Boats on experiences of heroin addiction (back in the 60s), a car crash and a kidney
Kidney
The kidneys, organs with several functions, serve essential regulatory roles in most animals, including vertebrates and some invertebrates. They are essential in the urinary system and also serve homeostatic functions such as the regulation of electrolytes, maintenance of acid–base balance, and...

 transplant from a friend. He toured the show around the United States and internationally. The impact of the show inspired members of the audience to volunteer to become organ donors.

His last work, the 51st (dream) state, featured music, dance, video and poetry about the responses to the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

. After a performance at the Melbourne Festival, the show was performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....

 in November 2006.

Recorded works

Sundiata recorded a number of works. His first recording The Blue Oneness of Dreams was nominated for a Grammy. He toured with Ani DiFranco
Ani DiFranco
Ani DiFranco is an American Grammy Award-winning singer, guitarist, poet, and songwriter. She has released more than 20 albums, and is widely considered a feminist icon.-Biography:...

 on her Rhythm and News tour in 2001 and his longstoryshort album was released on DiFranco's Righteous Babe label.

Sundiata's work was featured on HBO's "Def Poetry" series and PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

's "The Language of Life".

Teaching career

Sundiata taught writing at New School in New York City . DiFranco was one of his students and claimed at the time of his death that Sundiata "taught me everything I know about poetry."

Mike Doughty
Mike Doughty
Mike Doughty is an American indie and alternative rock singer-songwriter. He led the band Soul Coughing in the 1990s, and in the 2000s, became a solo artist...

 also studied under Sundiata in DiFranco's class. He wrote "Screenwriter's Blues" which was a minor hit for his band Soul Coughing
Soul Coughing
Soul Coughing was a popular New York-based alternative rock band. The band found modest mainstream success during the mid-to-late 1990s. Soul Coughing developed a devout fanbase and have garnered largely positive response from critics. Steve Huey describes the band as "one of the most unusual cult...

 in the 1990s, while studying in Sundiata's class.

Another musician/poet who studied with Sundiata (at Eugene Lang College at The New School for Liberal Arts) was Spin Doctors' lead singer Chris Barron. In fact, it was Sekou that coined the name "Spin Doctors" for the newly formed band in 1988/89.

Death

Sekou Sundiata died of heart failure at a hospital in Valhalla, New York on July 18, 2007. He had struggled with many life-threatening conditions throughout his life, including cancer, kidney failure, a kidney transplant, pneumonia, and a broken neck sustained in an auto accident.

External links

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