Sule Greg Wilson

Born in Washington, D.C., Sule Greg Wilson grew up in a home filled with love, music, intellectual considerations, and an emphasis on the long history of pan-African concerns. There were also many interesting people from around the world who would visit. His father was dean of foreign students at Howard University during a time when that university attracted the sons and daughters of the heads of state of many African and Caribbean nations. Wilson attended public schools in Washington, DC and was part of an integrative group of students, traveling on several busses from his home in the Manor Park/Takoma section of D.C. to Cleveland Park. He went on to attend Oberlin College and New York University. A noted dancer, storyteller, percussionist, and banjoist, he has long worked at the intersection of African American culture and history and culture and the practices of remembrance and preservation.

Whether as a thirteen-year-old touring D.C. parks in the summer of 1970, or hanging backstage with George Clinton while in high school, or as part of the premier African dance company in the country between 1977-1982, or representing the U.S. at the Asantehene's palace in Kumasi, Ghana, 1985, Wilson has been active in musical and cultural worlds for more than 50 years.

He was a part of a 2010 Grammy Award-winning album and was a founding member, along with Rhiannon Giddens and others, of Sankofa Strings, which eventually became the Carolina Chocolate Drops. His Drummer’s Path: Moving the Spirit with Ritual and Traditional Drumming is a cult classic of drumming aesthetics and practices. Through his Drumpath Rhythms/Become the Drum workshops, seminars, performances, and tutorials, he both preserves and advances a rhythmic vision of life, culture, and storytelling.