Village Voice – New York, NY
Vernon Reid remembers the seminal black artist and activist
by Vernon Reid
July 24th, 2007 5:42 PM
The untimely death last week of the visionary activist, poet,
playwright, songwriter, educator, and vocalist Sekou Sundiata is a
terrible shock to the many communities that his extraordinary life and
art touched. Sekou was truly a great man, an artist whose incisive
analysis of modern society was equaled by a deep compassion for, and
understanding of, the human condition. The sound of Sekou's voice was
iconic and electrifying, its deep melody the sound of a griot for the
ages. It was the sound of unflinching honesty, warmheartedness, wry
comedy, righteous anger, and elegiac longing. It was as distinctive as
Coltrane's horn or Jimi's guitar. Sekou loved everyday people, their
madness and occasional genius, their inexplicable and contradictory
natures.
I was introduced to Sekou in the early 1980s by the great drummer J.T.
Lewis, who was raving about an amazing poet he was playing with at City
College. I went to the gig and was mesmerized by a tall, dashing figure
who had the audience in the palms of his large, expressive hands. His
band Sekou and the Crew was funky and edgy, like Gil Scott Heron's
Midnight Band, but not at all derivative. After the show, J.T.
introduced me. Sekou became a mentor and a close friend.
Sekou was a witness to and part of the tumult of the '60s and '70s.
Despite the many setbacks that plagued and stymied the black-empowerment
movements, he remained a steadfast opponent of racism and fascism in all
their hydra-like forms, and was an indefatigable optimist with regard to
the future of black people. Unlike many black-power ideologues, Sekou's
love wasn't solely reserved for people of African descent, because he
internalized Dr. King's message of love for people of all colors. Sekou
was also a great romantic, a trenchant observer of the mysteries and
misunderstandings that exist between men and women, themes explored in
poems like "Forsaken Sea" and "Sweet Tooth"—poems I heard performed many
times, but which always seemed new because the truth never grows old.
Sekou was the first person from whom I heard about a drug named crack,
the first person who told what it was doing to his beloved Harlem. The
nation would soon follow. I also first learned about the emerging AIDS
crisis from him. He always had his ear to the street, listening to its
shadowy music, shifting rhythms, flows and currents.
Sekou had a magnetic leadership quality that centered the energies of
the artists he collaborated with. In Craig Harris, the master
trombonist, composer, and didgeridoo-ist, Sekou found a musical
soulmate. Their play collaboration, The Circle Unbroken Is a Hard Bop,
looked unsparingy at what happened to the children of Martin's dreams
and Malcolm's grassroots. The lyric prose work "Space, a Monologue" lies
at its center. It's a tour de force in the voice of a madman making mad
sense, an incredible stream of black consciousness that brings together
a butt-naked Marilyn Monroe in Bird's hotel room, Afrika Bambaataa, Nat
Turner, and Martha and the Vandellas. Astounding.
Nothing slowed Sekou down—not a kidney transplant, nor the terrible car
accident that happened right after. Sekou transformed these harrowing
experiences into his solo masterwork Blessing of Boats, performed
nationally to the acclaim his work always deserved. It's hard to imagine
a world without Sekou Sundiata in it. At the end of "Space, a
Monologue," he says: "Let this be my epitaph: 'His heart to the very end
was in the left place.'" And there he is, in the hearts of those he
loved, especially his beloved Maureen. In the hearts of those he taught,
and the ones he touched with his beautiful works, all of us who heard
him laugh or saw him dance at those great parties uptown or heard him
speak truth to power without clichés. Sekou Sundiata lives inside of us
now and will never die.
Musician-composer Vernon Reid is guitarist for the band Living Colour
and co-founder of the Black Rock Coalition.
Righteous Babe artist Sekou Sundiata passed away on July 18 from heart
failure.
Sekou, born Robert Feaster, grew up in the Black Arts/Black Aesthetic
movement of the 1960s and 70s. His poetry is filled with blues, funk,
jazz, and Afro-Caribbean influences. As he described it, "Music is
reference, source, resource, and inspiration to me as a writer and
performer. In fact, it's damn near impossible to understand what
contemporary black poets are doing without understanding what's going on
with black music and its relationship to black speech and black
literature. My work is grounded in African-American culture, necessarily
including African-American music."
He taught literature at New York’s New School University, where two of
his more famous students were Ani DiFranco and Soul Coughing’s M.
Doughty. Sekou released two albums of spoken word pieces – The Blue
Oneness of Dreams (through Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records) and
longstoryshort (on Righteous Babe).
I first saw Sekou perform in 2000 at a Righteous Babe Records’ showcase
at Makor in NYC. Having spoken to him on the phone but never met, I
first recognized him from his voice. He was minus the hat we used in
his publicity photo, and taller than I expected. He was in the middle
of sound check when I arrived at Makor – giving his band instructions –
but there was no mistaking his voice.
Ahhh, that voice – a voice that brought to life what he wrote. He knew
the power of the spoken word – that words placed in exactly the right
order could move people to action. But he also used his voice to texture
and color his lyrics – sharp and pointed and percussive when he
described the gritty urban landscape he saw around him and gentle as a
caress when he spoke of the music he loved.
I saw him perform his masterful one man piece “blessing the boats” in
Buffalo a couple of years later. It chronicled his personal journey
from sickness (Sekou suffered from kidney disease and was a transplant
recipient) through surgery and back to health. It was a rollercoaster of
emotion – and Sekou took us all there with him – from despair and hope
to tears and anger and joy. The power with which Sekou used words to
evoke emotion was a rare gift.
Greg Tate from the Village Voice once described Sekou as “… 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.”
I am saddened that his voice is now silent, but the power of his poetry
and performance lives on.
As a transplant recipient, Sekou included an organ donation card in the
longstoryshort CD. Please consider becoming an organ donor. More
information can be found at http://www.kidney.org/.
Donations in memory
of Sekou may be made to the National Kidney Foundation, 30 E. 33rd St.,
Suite 1100, NY NY 10016.
- Susan Tanner (RBR sales and marketing, Buffalo NY)
Sekou Sundiata, Ani and Todd Sickafoose at the Apollo, March 13, 2005
photo by Susan Alzner
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