SEKOU SUNDIATA: Renowned Artist Passes

Renowned poet, activist, and artist Sekou Sundiata passed yesterday, Wednesday, July 18, 2007. The arts community feels a great loss.

"Sekou is one of the most distinctive and original DJALI (Poet, Historian, Musician, Signifier) doing it. Sekou is Pre-Griot, meaning the ancient tradition of The Gleeman. Serious as light overhead in darkness."- Amiri Baraka

"This brother is the conduit through which the direct lineage of Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka, Gil-Scott Heron, and the Last Poets shall be maintained. Meaning, here is a writer with the bluesy poetic grasp, historical insight, and populist spirit to reach the bourgeois, seminar the politically correct, and still rock the boulevard."
- Greg Tate

Below is an official statement from the family:

At 5:47 AM on Wednesday, July 18, 2007, my beloved Sekou Sundiata passed away.
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 -Maurine (Kazi) Knighton

Here's more information about his life's work:
Sekou Sundiata was a poet who wrote for print, performance, music and theater. He had been a Sundance Institute Screenwriting Fellow, a Columbia University Revson Fellow, a Master Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida), the first Writer-in-Residence at the New School University, and a Lambent Fellowship in the Arts Fellow. He was featured in the Bill Moyers' PBS series on poetry, The Language of Life, and as part of Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam on HBO.

He wrote and performed in highly acclaimed performance theater works 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.

blessing the boats, Sundiata's first solo theater piece, opened in November 2002 at Aaron Davis Hall, NYC and was presented in more than 30 cities. 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 Theater SoundStage.

Sundiata created and implemented a substantial community engagement program in numerous cities across the country to complement and extend the reach of his artistic arrangement the 51st (dream) state. Sundiata also appeared as a featured speaker and artist at the Imagining America Conference (Ann Arbor, MI); Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA); Annual Conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and of the Theatre Communications Group, and Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Conference (Minneapolis, MN) among many others.

As a predecessor of hip-hop, Sundiata emerged as an artist during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Sundiata's first recording, the GRAMMY nominated The Blue Oneness of Dreams (Mouth Almighty/ Mercury), and its successor, longstoryshort (Righteous Babe Records), are both rich with the sounds of blues, funk, jazz and African and Afro-Caribbean percussion. He toured internationally with his band; in 2001, they performed in 23 cities in the United States and Canada as part of Ani DiFranco's "Rhythm and News Tour."

Sundiata was a literature teacher at the New School in New York.

For more information, visit his artist profile at the African American Literature Book Club (AALBC.com).