Sekou Sundiata was an African-American poet and performer, as well as a teacher at The New School in New York City.
19 Facts About Sekou Sundiata
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Sekou Sundiata's students include musicians Ani DiFranco and Mike Doughty.
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Sekou Sundiata's plays include The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop, The Mystery of Love, Udu, and The 51st Dream State.
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Sekou Sundiata released several albums, including Longstoryshort and The Blue Oneness of Dreams.
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In 2000 Sundiata received the Creative Capital Performing Arts Award.
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Sekou Sundiata's subjects included Jimi Hendrix, Nelson Mandela, and reparations for slavery.
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Sekou 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.
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Sekou Sundiata was a featured poet on two occasions at the Geraldine R Dodge Poetry Festival, most recently in 2006.
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Sekou Sundiata was born Robert Franklin Feaster in Harlem, New York, but changed his name in the late 1960s to honor his African heritage.
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Sekou Sundiata 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.
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Sekou Sundiata 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.
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Sekou Sundiata based his one-man show Blessing the Boats on experiences of heroin addiction, a car crash and a kidney transplant from a friend.
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Sekou Sundiata toured the show around the United States and internationally.
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Sekou Sundiata toured with Ani DiFranco on her Rhythm and News tour in 2001 and his longstoryshort album was released on DiFranco's Righteous Babe label.
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Sekou Sundiata's work was featured on HBO's Def Poetry series and PBS's The Language of Life.
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Sekou Sundiata taught writing at The New School in New York City.
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Sekou Sundiata wrote "Screenwriter's Blues", which was a minor hit for his band Soul Coughing in the 1990s, while studying in Sundiata's class.
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Sekou Sundiata died of heart failure at a hospital in Valhalla, New York on July 18,2007.
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Sekou Sundiata 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.