Sekou Sundiata

Sekou Sundiata (August 22, 1948 – July 18, 2007) was an African-American poet and performer, as well as a teacher at The New School in New York City. His students include musicians Ani DiFranco and Mike Doughty. 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. In 2000 Sundiata received the Creative Capital Performing Arts Award.

His subjects included Jimi Hendrix, Nelson Mandela, and reparations for slavery.

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, most recently in 2006.

Early life and education Sekou Sundiata was born Robert Franklin Feaster in Harlem, New York, 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 in 1972, before successfully undertaking a master's degree in creative writing from the City University of New York.

Sundiata's works combined poetry, music and drama. His musical influences included jazz, blues, funk and Afro-Caribbean rhythms. He worked closely with Craig Harris on works such as Udu, about slavery in modern Mauritania, and The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop about African Americans reaching adulthood in the 1960s. 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.

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.