21st-Century Homage to Djeli Crafstmanship.

Sekou Sundiata's organic free verse on CD reflects both traditional African roots and postmodernist vision

Poet and New School Professor Sekou Sundiata has been crafting poems for four decades. He began honing his skills during the Black Arts Movement, continued through hip-hop's halcyon days and is still working his mojo in the spoken word era. Sundiata's work has informed and been informed by all these movements. Even though he has opted to record more than publish his work, he will not brook being dubbed a spoken word artist. He's toiled too many hours on his "craft and sullen art" and those labels are too evanescent for Sundiata's blood, sweat and imaginative flashes.

He renders poems with pronounced literary value and a distinct aesthetic. And his performance style calls to mind the African djeli. These men were revered throughout their homelands for their retentive abilities. They were the centerpiece of celebrations and frequently the most reliable and venerated familial and cultural historians. Djelis employed rhyme as both a rhetorical tool and mnemonic device, since poetry was not a written art, initially. While performing, Sundiata's memorization skills and emotional improvisation, like numerous freestyle rappers, pays homage to the djeli craftsmanship at his poetry's roots.

Sundiata also has modernist and postmodernist influences. The esteemed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda helped create a South American poetic canon from virgin territory, literally and figuratively. Distinct from the European surrealist writers, who were concerned with distillation of dreams, Neruda harnessed the natural world. And employing both metaphor and mystery, Neruda recreated the earth with words. The poet T.S. Eliot wrote that "genuine poetry can communicate even before it is understood."

While reflecting on Neruda's work, Sundiata echoes Eliot's sentiment. "When I was a teenager in El Barrio, I would read Neruda out loud, in Spanish," Sundiata remembers. "The beauty of the language communicated something to me even before I understood what the words meant." Neruda's imagination roams with abandon through his writing. Similarly, Sundiata embraces the urban terrain and uses it as a mysterious and metaphorical point of departure.

Even though he employs both the fantastic and surreal, Sundiata also comes from the tradition of Black Arts trailblazer Amiri Baraka, who memorialized the incontrovertible poetry of our lives in uncompromising terms. In that regard, Baraka was a maverick, his writings a gateway. Baraka celebrated our attitude, our language, our je ne say what. The nexus for both Baraka's ferocious signifying and Neruda's fertile surrealism found in Sundiata's poetry could be simply called the blues.

Sundiata's poems communicate in the idiom of transcendence and transmutation. Sundiata forges a link between community, longevity and continuum. His is not a romanticization of the ghetto. He recognizes the community's pathologies but he does not write as if it is inherently pathological.

Sundiata's second CD, Longstoryshort, relies largely on Sundiata's organic free-verse poetry. Its sociopolitical stance, although peppered with surrealism, is more pronounced. He traveled to a Senegalese slave fort and eventually wrote and recorded the sociohistorical tune, "Isle De Goree," which seamlessly segues into the socio-economic cut "Reparations." His point is anything but subtle. "They need to give up reparations for African Americans. The Jewish people got paid, and should have, but that strengthens the precedent," Sundiata insists. "Previously it wasn't the case, but our awareness and consciousness is being raised. I believe this song will add to the debate and the discussion."

Sundiata's first CD, The Blue Oneness of Dreams, relied on tightly constructed, condensed and highly-charged popular songs--three minute solar systems the steeliest afronaut can get disoriented in. One of his more mesmerizing recordings "Space" is actually a dramatic monologue excerpted from his play, The Circle Unbroken is a Hard-Bop. This drama chronicles the reunion of three politically committed friends who survived the 60s and 70s and reminisce through a series of epistles. Space, the character, is summoned from these friends' memories. Sundiata's rendering of Space is a complex study in paranoid scatsophrenia. "He is a repository for memories that he can't handle, so he rants and raves in a stream of consciousness," Sundiata says. "Through him we get in a fragmented way a sense of the times and tempo. I am also paying homage to the phrasing of tenor saxophone players like Coltrane. It's meant to evoke jazz improvisation."

Sundiata's collaborations underscore the symbiotic relationship between poetry and music. In his work, there is a pronounced sense of play and surprise. His work is an adventure in self-discovery. Sundiata's poetic recitations suggest that the emotional odyssey and revelation is as much his as it his audiences. "Music goes straight to the heart," Sundiata feels. "And music gives the poetry wings, which makes it possible to feel a thought simultaneously."

While performing, Sundiata steers himself into emotional grottoes that he might not have been immersed in the last time he recited the same poem. That seems to be a byproduct of his multivalent surrealist tropes and his clear reverence for the relationship between the sounds in which he envelopes himself, and the ones that flow from his mouth. The marriage between Sundiata's poetry and music is like that of a chef who prepares gourmet meals from feel--but the greasing won't be pleasing unless the cook's got the right ingredients. Sundiata's got it. And with our renewed cultural interest in urban verse, Sundiata's graduate degree in creative writing, and undergraduate degree in revolution serve to rocket him into a seemingly limitless creative horizon.

Flava 4 Your Ears

Poetry is a genre that is often heard more than seen. Celebrate this year's National Poetry Month by taking in the aural experience of poetry by going to a poetry reading, and checking out some of the wonderful poetry offerings on cassette and CD. Here are a few we've listened to that will make your morning drive time a little more sensual:

Langston Hughes Reads His Poetry by Langston Hughes with commentary and reflections from the author Caedmon Audio, ISBN 0-694-52273-2 1 cassette, approx. 60 min.

A beautifully produced audiotape of Hughes reading some of his best work, including classics such as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and less-widely-celebrated greats such as "Out of Work" and "The Explanation of Our Times." Ossie Davis says it best in his introduction: "Open your ears and your heart if you've got one; Langston will walk right in and do the rest."

Between 2 Lines by wadud Sosa Records, 1999, $12.99, SKU 106-27-01022 1 CD, approx. 73 min.

The music wadud has put to his latest collection, a follow-up to 1995's "no additives or preservatives," has a distinct R&B flavor, which is a welcome diversion from the customary jazz/poetry combinations.

Smoke by C.C.H. Pounder Payola Records, December 2000, $14.99 SKU 0-15882-0040-2, 1 CD, approx. 40 min.

CCH Pounder's smokey voice cuts through her tracks in a rhythmic spoken word style. Set over trip-hop beats, this makes for an introspective listen.

Don't Forget the Kids this Easter!

He Is Risen--The True Meaning of Easter as Told By God's Animals Toy Box Productions, February 2000, $7.95 ISBN 1-887-72978-X, 1 cassette, approx. 30 min.

This unique package offers a fun, light way to start to dialogue about Jesus or to use as a continuation of one's religious teachings. In addition to the excellent audio recording, there is both a book, with color pictures for children to follow along and a theatrical version on CD-Rom.

Wonderful songs that everyone can join in and sing expand on both the learning and the fun. He Is Risen is a must-have for young Christian children. It's short, educational and promises a good time for the whole family.

--Reviewed by Robyn Moore