Sekou Sundiata (August 22, 1948 - July 18, 2007) was a poet who wrote for print, performance, music and theater. He had been a Sundance Institute Screenwriting Fellow, a Columbia University Revson Fellow, a Master Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida), the first Writer-in-Residence at the New School University, and a Lambent Fellowship in the Arts Fellow. He was featured in the Bill Moyers' PBS series on poetry, The Language of Life, and as part of Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam on HBO. Sundiata was a professor at Eugene Lang College in New York City.

He had written and performed in highly acclaimed performance theater works 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.

blessing the boats, Sundiata’s first solo theater piece, opened in November 2002 at Aaron Davis Hall, NYC and had been presented in more than 30 cities and continues to tour nationally. 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 Theater SoundStage. These projects were produced 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.
Sundiata’s first recording, the GRAMMY nominated The Blue Oneness of Dreams (Mouth Almighty/ Mercury), and its successor, longstoryshort (Righteous Babe Records), are both rich with the sounds of blues, funk, jazz and African and Afro-Caribbean percussion. He toured internationally with his band; in 2001, they performed in 23 cities in the United States and Canada as part of Ani DiFranco's "Rhythm and News Tour."