New York, NY —

New York performance poet Sekou Sundiata has been compared to Langston Hughes and Marvin Gaye for his writing about Black America. But 9/11 left him confused about American identity. Out of that he’s built a multi-media work, a cycle of songs, poems and monologs, video and dance. Siddhartha Mitter reports.

REPORTER: In his new theater piece” the 51st (dream) state,” Sekou Sundiata tells the story of his first encounter with Ground Zero, a few days after 9/11.

SUNDIATA: It was still smoldering. There was ash in the air. There were National Guardsmen with rifles around the perimeter. But everyone was very quiet and respectful, as if there was a kind of quietude or silence required for the kind of witnessing that was taking place. At that moment, what I can only describe as an American feeling came over me… It was a feeling that was familiar but was also very strange to me, … a very conflicted feeling. But it was an American feeling. [actuality]

MUSIC: from “the 51st (dream) state

REPORTER: Like many others, Sundiata identified as a hyphenated American – in his case, African American. He came up in the Black artist movement of the 1970s and his critically acclaimed performances often evoke aspects of the Black experience.

SUNDIATA: My generation was the last generation to be born Negro or colored and the first generation to be reborn Black. [actuality]

MUSIC: Bass solo from “the 51st (dream) state

SUNDIATA: My great-grandfather was lynched. I remember going South as a youngster… and feeling the intimidation, and the violence. It seemed like we were always on the edge of violence or terror. [actuality]

REPORTER: But September 11 brought a different kind of terror. It came from outside America. And it had no regard for race or background, for Sundiata’s personal American story – or anybody else’s.

SUNDIATA: I was a t a blind spot after 9/11. And so I wanted to reach a clearing, or as many clearings as I could. So it was personal, but also a public question at the same time. [actuality]

REPORTER: From a college in Pennsylvania, to Arab-American Dearborn, Michigan, to Minneapolis and California, Sundiata asked people of all backgrounds to gather and share their stories. At Stanford University, Sundiata spoke to a Mexican-American woman, an administrator there, about her sense of her hyphenated identity.

SUNDIATA: And what she said was, there are days, or moments when that hyphen is as strong as a concrete wall, and it’s huge and it seems insurmountable. And there are moments when it shrinks, when it’s very tiny and almost imperceptible. And then there are even those moments when it disappears.

MUSIC: Hindustani singing from “the 51st (dream) state

SUNDIATA: For me, that can happen in the space of one morning, in the space of a series of encounters within an hour. And at that moment, at Ground Zero, was one of those moments when the hyphen was imperceptible.

REPORTER: While Sundiata was working on “51st (dream) state,” Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf. In one scene, the focus pulls back from a blurry photo of human faces to show people trapped on top of a car, in a flood.

MUSIC: Life is what we’re thinking about all day. The water is rising. The sky over the harbor turns to beauty from time to time… [monolog from “the 51st (dream) state”]

SUNDIATA: I’m asking these questions about American citizenship; what does it mean to be a global citizen. And with that, there’s an even higher question. What does it mean to be a citizen of conscience? It doesn’t end with this narrow thing of American citizenship. [actuality]

REPORTER: In the end “the 51st (dream) state” doesn’t really solve the problem. Sundiata shies away from saying exactly how he’s changed. But his method, which is basically, get out there and talk to people, is one that anybody can use to make sense of troubled times. For WNYC, I’m Siddhartha Mitter.

MUSIC: from “the 51st (dream) state

HOST: Sekou Sundiata’s multimedia concert “51st (dream) state” will be presented in the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this November. For more information go to our website www.wnyc.org