2008 Woodie Awards
Sekou Sundiata at Power Center
Performer also gives lecture on culture and literature at WCC
Kawther Mohammed
Issue date: 1/29/07 Section: Inside WCC
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Big! Bang! Bam! Dancing lights and singing beauties moved across the stage as energetic men and soulful women danced, sang, and praised in their seats. Blink, and this article may disappear. Well, perhaps not, though it is exactly how attendees at the Power Center in downtown Ann Arbor witnessed Sekou Sundiata's performance on Saturday, January 20, 2007.
The polytonal performance poet cried into the microphone, full of passion and will. In his performance, he conveyed the "I'm black and I'm proud" stance, with a dash of soul, a wiggle of cultural vibe, and political ideologies as deep as a kettle pot of fried chicken.
The overall theme for Sundiata's "51st (dream) State" performance was essentially living life as a "hyphenated" American: African-American, Palestinian-American, Native-American, showing prerecorded interviews with an Egyptian-Lebanese-American, and a Palestinian-Muslim-American woman.
"Read the holy words and know what they mean," he preached once, twice, a dozen times in his performance, countless times pronouncing the word "nigga" with redemption, and putting the average jean-sagging, shirt-hanging, ghetto-talking, limp-walking man (and even woman) to shame as he explained, "when I say the word negro, I mean a culture, not a race," at a workshop about culture and literature at WCC on January 19, 2007.
There, he discussed his history of hair-dos that seemed to justify the type of person he was. When he worked his afro, he was an angry negro who stirred up trouble, when he sported the jerry curls, he was….well, words couldn't explain what he was, likewise for anyone else who mocked the hideous hairstyle.
Don't be deceived, the hour and a half discussion was not only about cosmetology; Sundiata was explaining to students that the same way that hair shouldn't justify a person as who they are, neither should race. Though there is the Black Arts Movement, a movement that helped "Newly Blacks," could change the world.
The polytonal performance poet cried into the microphone, full of passion and will. In his performance, he conveyed the "I'm black and I'm proud" stance, with a dash of soul, a wiggle of cultural vibe, and political ideologies as deep as a kettle pot of fried chicken.
The overall theme for Sundiata's "51st (dream) State" performance was essentially living life as a "hyphenated" American: African-American, Palestinian-American, Native-American, showing prerecorded interviews with an Egyptian-Lebanese-American, and a Palestinian-Muslim-American woman.
"Read the holy words and know what they mean," he preached once, twice, a dozen times in his performance, countless times pronouncing the word "nigga" with redemption, and putting the average jean-sagging, shirt-hanging, ghetto-talking, limp-walking man (and even woman) to shame as he explained, "when I say the word negro, I mean a culture, not a race," at a workshop about culture and literature at WCC on January 19, 2007.
There, he discussed his history of hair-dos that seemed to justify the type of person he was. When he worked his afro, he was an angry negro who stirred up trouble, when he sported the jerry curls, he was….well, words couldn't explain what he was, likewise for anyone else who mocked the hideous hairstyle.
Don't be deceived, the hour and a half discussion was not only about cosmetology; Sundiata was explaining to students that the same way that hair shouldn't justify a person as who they are, neither should race. Though there is the Black Arts Movement, a movement that helped "Newly Blacks," could change the world.
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