Michael ‘Mawazo’ Dean is an African American and Afro-Choctaw artist, writer, musician, and curator. Born in San Diego, California, 27 km from the United States/Mexico border, Michael spent his childhood in the American West Coast before relocating to Metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia as a teen. Both completing his Master of Arts in Anthropology at California State University Fullerton in 2024 and embarking on Doctor of Philosophy studies in Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Riverside, Michael’s area of focus encompasses the continental and global African Diaspora. He is a descendant of Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen who had arrived in pre-statehood Oklahoma, Indian Territory through enslavement and the Trail of Tears alongside Five Tribes tribal members of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Cherokee, and Muscogee/Creek Nations; these Freedmen later co-established the historical Black towns of Oklahoma including Black Wall Street. Michael traces his African heritage to Mende, Fulani, Mandinka, Yoruba, and Benga peoples through his paternal lineage and Malagasy peoples through his maternal lineage. 

His diverse experience as a creative professional where music, performance, and the arts intersect with culture, grassroots activism and civic engagement motivates his multidisciplinary approach to exploring the past and contemporary worlds of African descendant populations in global and local contexts of being. Featured for his work in music and community engagement, Michael has appeared in AFROPUNK, Atlanta Intown Paper, and has held internships with Blind Ambition Management, Sony Music, and Aspire TV. An alumni of the Billboard-featured Joel A Katz Music & Entertainment Business program, he also earned his Bachelor of Science in communications with a public relations concentration at Kennesaw State University. 

Michael engages anthropology with multimodal foundations exploring decolonial, ethnographic, autoethnographic, indigenous, and humanistic approaches to scholarship. During his anthropological M.A. studies, he has explored topics ranging from Soul Train and Social Bonding in Music and Dance to post-Apartheid Decolonial Discourse on Namibia to African American Placemaking.