About this Artist

Poet Kamau Daáood is the author of The Language of Saxophones: Selected Poems of Kamau Daáood, City Lights Publishers, 2005 and Notes D’un Griot De Los Angeles a bi-lingual translation, 2012, Le Castor Astral publisher 2012, during his Artist-in-Residency at the University of Bordeaux in Bordeaux, France. He is a native of Los Angeles where he co-founded with drummer Billy Higgins, The World Stage Performance Gallery: A non-profit arts institution. His early development began as a young member of the Watts Writers Workshop and the Pan African People’s Arkestra, under the direction of pianist Horace Tapscott in the late 60’s.

Kamau recorded the critically acclaimed CD Leimert Park, M.A.M.A. Records, 1997. He has been the subject and featured poet in several documentaries, including Life is a Saxophone produced by S. Pearl Sharp, 1984; Leimert Park: The Story of a Village in South Central L.A. by Jeannette Lindsay, 2005; and the PBS documentary Race is the Place, Paradigm Productions, 2005. Most recently he appeared in And When I Die I Won't Stay Dead, a film about Bob Kaufman by Filmmaker Billy Woodbury, 2016.

Kamau Daáood, the recipient of numerous honors, awards and fellowships has spent fifty years performing, recording, curating, teaching and producing, This includes organizing and creating art in schools, churches, prisons, storefronts, arts venues, libraries, festivals, conferences, radio, television, museums, and galleries nationally, and internationally. In 2018, Kamau received a fully supported writing residency in Bordeaux France for two months through the French Cultural Agency, ECLA to work on his memoir.