Make it even shorter

Sekou Sundiata is not your daddy's spoken word hero. Not unless you're the child of a griot—a combination storyteller, musician, teacher, poet and historian. Sundiata is well known in spoken-word and music circles as the inheritor of both the poetic and musical traditions of African-American culture: his words embody the spirit of Langston Hughes and Amiri Baraka, his music the spirit of John Coltrane and Bob Marley. His performances combine the two in a sometimes fascinating, sometimes annoying fusion. In Long Story Short, Sundiata pulls off a few incredible moments which salvage the rest of the thoroughly mediocre album.

Sundiata's poetry, however, is far from mediocre. He tells it like it is, praising and criticizing whomever he deems worthy of his verse. "This is no Black History Month tale," Sundiata says of his poetry in the album's liner notes. "This is the truth about Americans still enslaved by the ideas, images and relationships that were set off way back when." His commentary traverses a vast range of subject matter, from Hiroshima to Nelson Mandela, and includes well-chosen, well-placed references to the greatest hits and misses of African and African-American culture. Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s, CC '73, signifying monkey shares poetic space with the Temptations in "Mandela." Though Sundiata occasionally lapses into tired rhetoric, he is consistently original and fresh in both his subjects and opinions.

As for the music, it's hard to tell whether Sundiata's poetry is served well or ill by it. It defies classification, ranging from Afro-pop-reggae to hip-hop to porn soundtrack. As is the case with many spoken-word albums that have a musical component, however, the beats get repetitive and irritating, detracting from the poetry. The music fuses best on this album when beats reinforce the rhythms of Sundiata's poetry, and worst when he laces words over rhythms that just cannot accommodate his complex verse patterns. "Urban Music," for instance, suffers greatly from this problem, as the Shaft-like background hook detracts from the intelligent lyrics. But the tracks without musical accompaniment are, for the most part, excellent. Sundiata's soothing voice is strong enough to carry a track by itself.

The album is far from perfect, and in fact, often just a pain to listen to. But the good tracks outnumber and out-style the bad, and the album provides a great opportunity to become acquainted with one of the most intelligent voices in the struggling spoken word genre. (Righteous Babe)

—Alan Schoenfeld

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