GREAT CHOICE! I couldn’t like Jabari’s book any more if somebody paid me.
I’m glad the brother is stepping into the historic continuum of Black magazine journalism on such a (deserved) high level. We know well his past work, and The Ancestors are watching…….
……then Cornel West should be very happy with these two tributes. LOL! 🙂
Here’s more, if you want it.
Ebony and Jet are online. No, a real site. Really. With punchy, well-written, original content on it. More proof we’re in the 21st century. 😉
Fiore is really good at what he does.
The whole family in front of me had round glasses of some type—some Harryish, some real.
We were in line, outside, in downtown College Park, Maryland.
For The Book.
Evangelists and snarky, too-cool passerby college students couldn’t spoil our mood. In front of me, mostly 10-year-olds, dressed in black cloaks and black wizard hats I’d see all evening. In back, mostly teens, sans stuff.
Darkness was setting. The Wait Had Begun.
I’m an Old School Geek, so this particular fetish took some time to develop. I mean, I just like the movies. But since this was the last one—the last book, the last Friday/Saturday midnight book release party—I had to go to Vertigo.
One little girl was going to make sure the Vertigo folks kept their word about the 10:15 p.m. opening. She stuck her face up against the window and announced, “Two minutes.”
The doors opened on time. Staffer Jennifer Cook was in full let’s-have-fun-kids mode—y’know, the way she always is with grownups who enter Vertigo. 🙂 Kids in tonight’s standard uniform, circled on the floor. She asked them how many have read all the books more than once. Most, if not all, raised their hands.
While looking at the long line, my eye caught something from my childhood: “Charlotte’s Web.”
(Jen to Kids: “Should we trust Snape?”)
That book spawned a great animated film and a live-action movie. But it never created its own culture. I wondered what it would have been like to have a “Charlotte’s Web” club, where kids would walk around dressed as pigs or spiders carrying signs saying “SOME PIG.”
(Jen to Kids, hosting a kind of Harry Potter version of “Jeopardy”: “The Weasley’s home is called THIS.”)
A palm reader was present, while a magician worked the crowd.
One beautiful young sister, looking about 10, not only had the full hood, but the Gryffindor scarf. You know the one.
Slowly, the line became a polite crowd. At least 100, including a tall guy who had on a trench and a “Mad-Eye” Moody eye.
The Bookstore Master Plan was also in effect: some of the patrons were looking at other books.
(Jen to Kids, announcing a Harry Potter quiz: “If you’re not careful, I’ll break out into a bad British accent.”)
Zero hour. Or, more appropriately, the Witching Hour.
My number was Four. I quickly squeezed my way out the store. Knowing now there would be no more.
The Realm of the Ancestors has gained another serious artist.
Liked this description of him and his work.
And thanks to Akila Worksongs for the obit below. It says it all.
AUGUST 27TH UPDATE: Here is Baraka’s eulogy.
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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 beloved family members, including his mother, Virginia Myrle Feaster, his wife, Maurine Knighton, daughter Myisha, stepdaughters Dina Gomez and Aida Riddle, grandson Aman, brothers William Walter Feaster, and Ronald Eugene Feaster, sister Devona, sister-in-law Nitah, a niece, Tisha Taylor, nephews William, Keith Omar and Glenn and their respective wives, Aloma, Irene and Marie, as well as a host of other relatives, admirers, students and friends.
# # #
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An official statement from the family of Sekou Sundiata…
The memorial service for
SEKOU SUNDIATA
will take place
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
New School University
Tischman Auditorium
64 W. 12th Street • 1st Floor
New York, NY 10011
7:00 pm
AUGUST 18 UPDATE:
SPOILER WARNING: This little diddy about Freema Agyeman contains all sorts of spoilers for the current season of one of the BBC’s most famous creations, “Doctor Who.” The long-running program, revived in 2005 after an extended absence from the airwaves, just finished its third-season run in the United Kingdom. The Tee Vee Gods are now airing those episodes in America at 9 p.m. EST on Fridays on the Sci-Fi Channel.
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Yes, Martha Jones is very pretty. But try to ignore that, because she’s also a doctor—well, almost. Then she meets a bloke (well, an alien from another galaxy who just so happens to look and sound like a British white man 🙂 ) who actually calls himself The Doctor, and she falls head over heels in love with him. So when he asks her to follow him around time and space in what looks and sounds like, to American eyes and ears, a blue public telephone booth that makes a wheezing noise like an old freight elevator travelling between floors, she readily accepts.
Round and round Martha goes, piercing eternity and infinity. She meets Shakespeare, who gets such a hard-on for her, he composes sonnets to his “Dark Lady.” She visits New York City thousands of years in the future, then returns to Manhattan during the 1930s to fight some evil-looking R2-D2s. 🙂 In between adventures (and, somehow, during!), she blogs on her MySpace page.
Martha’s mother didn’t take to The Doctor at first, but her brother and sister seemed to be fine with him. (Psst! Shhh! Here’s a whole episode to watch so you can see The Doctor and Martha out on a “date” with her family around her. Don’t snitch!) Martha decides to defy her mother, and stay with The Doctor, regardless of the danger. She’s hooked on him and the experience.
From her blog:
“He isn’t testing me so much as expecting me to work things out for myself. Which is great as I guess it means he’s not just seeing me as some kind of passenger.”
And so it went. Until the trip got heartbreaking, and then really scary. Then she had to leave The Doctor and travel the Earth in order to save him and it.
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Truth be told, Freema Agyeman said she was a Trekker at first. Her story goes something like this: Working at a video store, the struggling actress appeared briefly in the Season Two finale two-parter, “Army of Ghosts”/”Doomsday.” Then she was told by the “Doctor Who” producers that she was up for a role in the “Doctor Who” spinoff “Torchwood.” After auditioning came the big reveal: she got the “Doctor Who” role—the co-lead, replacing the super-popular Billie Piper. Although she’s not The Doctor’s first non-white companion, she was billed as the “first official” (read: main) Black companion, for the sake of PR, etc.
She’s now a star. And she’s been very kind and gracious about it. Overnight, she’s an action star and even an animated cartoon character.
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As an overwhelmingly white show, “Doctor Who” doesn’t really have a racial history to talk about. In the 1970s, the show did a story, “The Talons of Weng-Chiang,” that had seemingly every Asian male stereotype possible. Blacks were few and far in-between. That changed greatly with the show when it was revived in 2005. On the new show, Blacks were heroes and villians, and everything in-between. The addition of Martha/Freema as the show’s second-lead was just part of the new racial mix.
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You’ll just have to see on Sci-Fi how Martha gets her heart broken before saving the world—and how those two stories are related. I thought the whole season was GREAT.
I’m happy that Martha’s story will continue next season. But with history made, the TARDIS will now get a little crowded. I feel bad that it seems that Freema got demoted on her own program, but the show does have to change as it goes into its fourth season next year. At least Martha is still a force to be reckoned with—and, as you’ll see, she more than earns her stripes. All hail The Doctor—Martha, that is!
Nelson Mandela is 89 today. With all due respect to my atheist friends, that’s proof enough for me of the existence of a Supreme Being. 🙂
I thought this is a great article on the topic. I wish I knew enough about Harry Potter to be REALLY impressed. 🙂
6:36 P.M. EST UPDATE WITH *MAJOR* SPOILERS (AND PERHAPS A LINK TO THE BOOK ITSELF): I KNOW you’ve heard about the spoilers. I’ve seen the scans of the pages, but the quality is too poor to read. Now, this separate scanning of what is, apparently, the book’s Epilogue (if/when you go there, scroll down QUICKLY to the bottom if you don’t want to read the site’s listed Book 7 spoilers) has certainly circled the globe this afternoon.
So, don’t read any further if you don’t want to know anything.
Seriously.
Don’t do it. 🙂
It might be wrong anyway, so why risk it?
Okay, here goes………..
🙂
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AND NOW, THE ONLY POSSIBLE *SPOILER* I CARE ABOUT
So Ron is supposedly killed, but somehow is alive and well (and a father, no less!) in the “Nineteen Years Later” Epilogue? If true (BIG “IF”), that might be the character Rowling last year said got a “reprieve.” So, according to what I read, the epic’s central trio is safe, and both you-know-whos are married to those other you-know-whos, all with crumb-snatchers galore. An honest-to-gosh happy ending after all for this long fairy tale—if this is true.
Hmmm……long wait until 12:01 a.m. Saturday. 🙂
JULY 23rd UPDATE: I’m one-fourth in, and Ron is safe and sound. (And yes, I did cheat and skim throughout the whole thing to make sure he was fine.) And I’m sure you know now that the “Nineteen Years Later” Epilogue was indeed the real deal. So nobody died that, say, a casual Potterite cares about. I guess it was silly to think that an author worth a billion dollars would be dumb enough to enrage her fans. 😉
JULY 30TH UPDATE: Now half-way done. Really good children’s book.
Saw on “Dateline NBC” last night that the character who Rowling saved was Mr. Weasley. Good. I like him.
Drums in the Global Village 