News Release

Note: For artist bio and photos, see end of release.

'Def Poetry Jam' artist to present
international multimedia show

CHAPEL HILL - Traveling the country for two years after 9/11, poet and performer Sekou Sundiata sought out people's experiences of what it means to be an American citizen in these turbulent times.

With their responses and his own insights, Sundiata crafted "the 51st (dream) state," a performance of music, dance, poetry and videotaped interviews that will be staged at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 24 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Carolina Performing Arts will present the performance in Memorial Hall's Beasley-Curtis Auditorium. Songs, poems and monologues supported by still and moving projected images constitute the work, which had its New York premiere in November at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It features singers and musicians, with keyboards, trumpets, drums, bass and guitar.

"the 51st (dream) state" is Sundiata's contemplation on America's national identity, its power in the world and its guiding mythologies.

Sundiata, a veteran of HBO's "Def Poetry Jam," is a professor at Eugene Lang College in New York City. He was featured in Bill Moyers' PBS poetry series "The Language of Life" and received a Grammy nomination for his recording of music and poems "The Blue Oneness of Dreams." The Washington Post has compared him to Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes.

Born Robert Feaster in Harlem, Sundiata changed to his African name in the days of civil rights marches and the black arts and black aesthetic movement of the 1960s and '70s.

Tickets for the performance, $15-$35, are available online at www.carolinaperformingarts.org, by calling (919) 843-3333 or from the Memorial Hall Box Office on Cameron Avenue, open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Tickets for Carolina students are $10. Tickets also are on sale for other performances. For more information, visit www.carolinaperformingarts.org.

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Note: For artist media kits and downloadable photos, visit www.carolinaperformingarts.org/media.

Carolina Performing Arts contacts: Don Smith, (919) 843-3119, donsmith@email.unc.edu or Jennifer Warner, (919) 966-3834, jenniferwarner@unc.edu