revus grevus: sundiata on a sungun: 360%: obit by louis reyes rivera

hello world
my boy sekou sundiata just graduated

i left memphis trying to make it back but he got away
while i was on the road - aint that somehow fitting

graduating ceremony on 21st and a retro of his life and work
aug 22nd at the brooklyn academy of music

heart attack apparently - man, all my folk checking out
sekou cuts it mighty mighty close though, sekou was my boy

that phrase, sundiata on a sungun: 360%, is only one of the many ive
stolen from sekou over the years, we were a political crew of artists

started doing plays as part of the black new york action committee's cultural wing
the first one was a collabrative called bloodflower, based on a poem by bj ashanti

that was when sekou got into doing his aural performances and i met the
folk who became my politico artist crew - sekou, ashanti, safiya, pat, sandy, etc

writers, dancers, visual artists, etcetc, all meeting in sekous loft over
on 124th street, which was also party central - some serious le bon ton roulet

me and sekou was like brothers till we fell out over a woman didnt
choose either of us  - that didnt stop us from locking horns over her

we made up eventually but never was as close as we once was
both of us alpha leos and tending to hold grudges

me and sekou use to celebrate the whole leo month as our birthday
used to meet at panchitas down in the village for a ritual veggie salad

but with literary companeros, the rituals of respect are important
one misstep and you fueding for years

got a long shitlist now of folk who have dissed me the last 10 years or so
treat me like i dont rate - i will show you what time it is, you gon regret dissing me

when it becomes literary is when poison works flourish, me and louis reyes been
on the outs bout two three years now, and bj ashanti mad at everybody, g p

i took a punch at louis reyes in rest for the weary, gon have to extract that
or even better take it to where i am now - the high ground

i didnt even realize sekou was mad at me but he was acting funny and when i finally
figured out why i said man you have jacked a misdemeanor up to a felony

sekou say he get to decide the charge
looking back bring a smile to my face

during the time me and sekou was fueding
i would think we too old to be fueding like this

cause we at that point in life we could check out anytime
and now he has - and im in denial - not sekou, sekou was indestructible  -

more lives than a cat

cancer survivor (testicular no less)
broke his neck driving that old volvo over a cliff
kidney failure and transplant drama

sekou was larger than life
sekou was legend

and the leader of our literary pack
a story yet to be told

got to work harder rick, got to tell the story before its
time for me to check out too - so many projects, so little time

also need to check current fueds w/my literary companeros of old
what with everybody checking out i cant afford fueds

(wonder how  ashanti doing these days, ive tried contacting him, he off the grid - i miss ashanti and wow, that make me think of akua lezli, she been going thru some fire lately, i need to get in touch with her, see how she doing. . .and on and on. . and on on and on)

speaking of legacies and checking out

had a good time with my nephews, the hoodoo posse flowers indeed
wanted to be calm dali lama unca ricky but i had to pull out the inner drill sgt on them

they wore out the weary

was laying around in memphis trying to get my energy back for the trek up 81
when i heard sekou was in a coma and headed on back to the city

as always when im home i did maintenance on my bottletrees over in riverside park

most of my bottletrees in the park are hidden deep in it but some are public and sometime
neighborhood kids have used my bottles for target practice so i always come prepared to replace

broken ones, but this time none were broken, thank the conqueror, so i had all these extra bottles and instead of starting a new tree as i have done in the past, i started hanging them all thru the park

decided to make the whole park one big bottle tree
one big delta holyground

for those who dont know the story, i consider the delta an afroam holyground
and this wooded area i grew up alongside the mississippi as sacred ground

riverside park its called - working it as sacred ground in my novel
working it as sacred ground in real life -been sanctifying it w/mythwork and bottletrees

protecting memphis, the mississippi and the delta
dont no evil get past rickydocs ring of glass

so i figure making it a parkwide bottletree not only protect memphis and the delta
but the whole wide world and all our generations - gon do that in sekous name

sanctuary

this obit was sent out by louis reyes
w/whom i really need to bury the hammer

maybe when i see him on the 21st
in sekous name

revus grevus  (some nonsensical parting phrase
sekou was partial to)

my love to you all
rdoc

 

 

Obituary:

Gifted Poet Sekou Sundiata

(August 22, 1948 -- July 18, 2007)

by Louis Reyes Rivera

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday, July 18, 2007, at 5:47a.m. (ET), poet Sekou Sundiata passed away. A highly esteemed performing poet, Mr. Sundiata wrote for print, performance, music and theater. Born Robert Franklin Feaster in Harlem, on August 22, 1948, Sundiata came of age as an artist during the Black Arts/Black Aesthetic movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

 

While attending the City College of New York (CCNY), where he began reciting poetry publicly, Sundiata converged with several other student activists, including once-mayoral candidate of Pittsburgh and longtime friend, Leroy Hodge, to form the basis for what soon became known as the Black and Puerto Rican Student Community of City College (BPRSC). This phalanx of 400 students soon made their own history, closing the 21,000-student campus during the Spring of 1969, to demand, among other things, that CCNY be renamed Harlem University. The net effect of the student takeover culminated in both an Open Admissions Policy that took effect in September 1970, the full legitimization of ethnic studies departments throughout the nation, as well as the requirement that all education majors within the City University take courses in African American History and to have Spanish as a Second Language.

 

Among his acknowledged mentors at City were Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, and fellow student Louis Reyes Rivera, with whom Sundiata helped to establish the first Black student newspaper in the City University, CCNY's The Paper. Their association would span close to forty years of mutual respect and admiration.

 

Upon completing his Bachelor's Degree (circa 1974), Sundiata enrolled and completed his Master's in Creative Writing while regularly producing community-based poetry readings that were known to draw SRO crowds. In 1976, his creative sensibilities, his innate organizing skills, and his associations with a convergent generation of excellent poets, musicians and dancers immediately led to a collaborative project he directed that would commemorate 100 years of Black struggle for freedom and Human Rights. Titled The Sounds of the Memory of Many Living People (1863-1876/ 1963-1976) , this production, which included upcoming novelist Arthur Flowers and such poets as Safiya Henderson-Holmes, BJ Ashanti, Tom Mitchelson, Louis Reyes Rivera, et al, was staged in Harlem over a period of two days, signaling much of what was to come from Sekou's sense of vision, steadily breaking ground for what was then a new literary genre,

Performance Poetry, fully anticipating elements of both Hip Hop Culture and Spoken Word Art.

 

In 1977, the aforementioned poets, along with Zizwe Ngafua, Rashidah Ismaili, Fatisha (Hutson), Sandra Maria Esteves, Akua Lezli Hope, Mervyn Taylor, and Sekou, among others, formed the Calabash Poets Workshop, which group signaled the arrival of a new literary heat in New York, regularly producing soirees and fori (1977-1983) that included all of the arts and culminated in a three-year attempt (1979-1982) to establish an independent Black Writers Union.

 

Upon the release of his first vinyl album (circa 1980), Are & Be, Sekou Sundiata was dubbed by Amiri Baraka as "the State of the Art." Since then, Mr. Sundiata established a longtime relationship with  CCNY's Aaron Davis Performing Arts Center, through which venue he intermittently produced new material for the stage, consistently collaborating with musicians, dancers and actors. He was eventually selected for a number of earned fellowships, including a Sundance Institute Screenwriting Fellow, a Columbia University Revson Fellow, a Master Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida), and as the first Writer-in-Residence at the New School University in New York, in which university's Eugene Lang College he remained a professor.

 

He was, as well, among those featured in the Bill Moyers' PBS series on poetry, The Language of Life, and in Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam on HBO.

Among several highly acclaimed performance theater works in which he served as both author and performer are: 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 and presented by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, the Walker Art Center and Penumbra Theater in Minneapolis, Flynn Center in Burlington, VT, the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and Miami-Dade Community College in Florida. Throughout this period and since 1985, he developed a close association with co-collaborator and legendary trombonist Craig S. Harris.

blessing the boats, Sundiata's first solo theater piece, an exploration into his own personal battles with kidney failure, opened in November 2002 at Aaron Davis Hall, NYC. It has since been presented in more than 30 cities and continued to tour nationally. 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's SoundStage. in partnership with the Apollo Theater Foundation, the National Kidney Foundation and the New York Organ Donor Network with support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Since 2006, his the 51st (dream) state has been presented throughout the U.S. and in Australia. Both blessing the boats and the 51st (dream) state were produced in collaboration with MultiArts Projects and Productions (MAPP). In addition to working within community engagement activities at Harlem Stages/Aaron Davis Hall, the University of Michigan and University Musical Society (Ann Arbor, MI), the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC), the University of Texas Austin (Austin, TX), in Miami Dade College (Miami, FL), and the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, Sundiata has appeared as a featured speaker and artist at the Imagining America Conference (Ann Arbor, MI), at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), and at the Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Conference (Minneapolis, MN), among others. Prior to his demise, he was engaged in producing a DVD documenting the America Project for use by universities and presenters as a model for art and civic engagement.

In addition to the 1979 Are & Be album, Sundiata's other releases include a second album, The Sounds of the Memory of Many Living People, and two CDs, The Blue Oneness of Dreams, nominated for a Grammy Award, and longstoryshort. Each of these works are rich with the sounds of blues, funk, jazz and African and Afro-Caribbean percussion, with the latter two featuring Craig Harris.

 

He is survived by his mother, Virginia Myrtle Feaster, his wife, Maurine Knighton, daughter Myisha Gomez, stepdaughter Aida Riddle, grandson Aman, brothers William Walter Feaster and Ronald Eugene Feaster, as well as a host of relatives, admirers, students and friends.

 

A private funeral service of family and friends is scheduled for Saturday, July 21, and a commemorative celebration of his life and work is scheduled to take place on August 22, his birthday, at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera House. Details to follow. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in the name of Sekou Sundiata to the New York Organ Donor Network or to the National Kidney Foundation.

 

 

 

 

 

(l. Craig Harris; r. Sekou Sundiata)

Comments

[Chris Geyer]

my prayers for your boy..and you.

[Jeremy]

My dear teacher
Rest in Paradise
words cannot express my pain
Long Live Sekou Sundiata

[rdoc]

chris, jeremy, i feel you
stay strong

rdoc