{"id":5258,"date":"2007-07-20T10:23:41","date_gmt":"2007-07-20T10:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5258"},"modified":"2007-07-20T10:23:41","modified_gmt":"2007-07-20T10:23:41","slug":"sekou-sundiata-1948-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5258","title":{"rendered":"Sekou Sundiata, 1948-2007"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was very sorry to read in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/07\/20\/arts\/music\/20sundiata.html?_r=1&#038;oref=slogin\">The New York Times<\/a> that Sekou Sundiata has died. I once had the privilege to speak on a panel with him and have heard some of his performances. (Visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/audio\/2000\/10\/05\/sundiata\/\">Salon <\/a>for some sample audio.) Sundiata was a poet, performance artist, and organizer of community performances. His &#8220;the 51st (dream) state&#8221; is a remarkable portrait of the US after 9\/11, full of hope and openness. He was a serious critic of White racism and he had an African aesthetic. Born in Harlem as Robert Franklin Feaster, he took an African name. But &#8220;the 51st (dream) state&#8221; is intensely patriotic about the USA. We all have complex and overlapping identities. Sundiata had the talent and the integrity to explore his own identities with eloquence and an open mind; and he was brilliant at helping other people to do the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was very sorry to read in The New York Times that Sekou Sundiata has died. I once had the privilege to speak on a panel with him and have heard some of his performances. (Visit Salon for some sample audio.) Sundiata was a poet, performance artist, and organizer of community performances. His &#8220;the 51st [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}