Classic Recordings, Sarah Webster Fabio, 'Jujus/Alchemy of the Blues' & 'Together to the Tune of Coltrane's “Equinox”'

Even over four decades since her passing, the renowned poet, activist and scholar Sarah Webster Fabio (1928-1979) remains a force to be reckoned with. During her lifetime, Fabio authored numerous collections of poetry and edited several anthologies on Black and Women’s literature as well as teaching in universities across the United States. Most notably, she is responsible for helping to build a West Coast presence for the Black Arts Movement and is often credited as establishing Black Studies as an academic discipline.  

In a similar fashion to the influential modernist Langston Hughes (1901-1967), perhaps the most famous 'jazz poet' still to this day, Fabio's work is best experienced in the context of oral recitation - that is, read aloud - with instrumental accompaniment, two stunning examples of which are receiving their first official reissue: Jujus/Alchemy of the Blues (1976) and Together to the Tune of Coltrane's "Equinox" (1977). Whereas Hughes' career had blossomed at the height of the Harlem Renaissance during the twenties and thirties, the everyday African American experience had begun to shift in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement as people began to question the very society they lived in and the injustices they were facing on a daily basis. The sixties and seventies were an era of radical socio-cultural upheaval and by then the creative arts had since moved with the times, reflecting the politically-conscious soul, funk and R&B that had since hit the airwaves of midcentury America. Away from the musical hotspot of New York and north of the glitzy Hollywood limelight of Los Angeles, there was Oakland, the West Coast epicentre of the emerging Black Arts Movement where, in 1966, Huey P. Newton founded the Black Panther Party. It was also the area where Fabio achieved some of her most important work, having taught at Merritt College before co-founding the first Black Studies departments at the California College of the Arts and the University of California-Berkeley.

Academically gifted, the ambitious educator was dedicated to teaching as much as she was to organising in her community; her 'mothering' of Black Studies was mirrored by her domestic life where she was simultaneously raising five children at home. Fabio's decision to commit her artistic legacy to record came after a near-death experience following a car crash in the winter of 1971. Despite her albums' release via the distinguished Folkways label (an accolade in itself), her subsequent recording career was all but overshadowed by the likes of Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets, who would make names for themselves by combining revolutionary verse with contemporary jazz idioms in a proto-rap trend, eventually rising from the underground to achieve commercial success. Even the activist and ex-chairwoman of the Black Panthers, Elaine Brown enjoyed a brief spell in the music industry at one time. Nevertheless, what Sarah Webster Fabio lacked in insurrectionary zeal, she more than made up for through a sly rebelliousness deriving from the mixture of her own scholarly wisdom and humble authenticity. 

Jujus/Alchemy of the Blues is an ideal starting-point for newcomers to Fabio's work and Afro-centric jazz in general. A subtle benchmark of emancipatory expression, this record speaks of the Black experience and picks up almost half a century on from where Hughes' 'The Weary Blues' left off. Essentially, the record combines the hot attitude of Fabio's caustic spoken word with the break-beat energy of street funk and other assertive musical genres of the day. The next EP receiving its first ever vinyl reissue is Together To The Tune Of Coltrane's "Equinox", Fabio's fourth and final release recorded two years before her death from colon cancer in 1979. This collection of poems by Sarah Webster Fabio and her frequent collaborator Leon Wiliams (credited here as Deniake) is another prime example of Fabio's affinity for combining poetry with music. In this blues-inspired album, Fabio and Don't Fight the Feeling, a band made up of family and friends pay tribute to John Coltrane, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington while simultaneously building a positive collective identity for African Americans with poems like 'Pride' and 'Black Is'.

The poet’s relevance and esteemed influence have only grown since her passing, if the inclusion of her recordings on both volumes of the recent Soul Of A Nation compilations from Soul Jazz Records is anything to go by. There is only one known example of video footage to feature Fabio, the documentary short Rainbow Black: Poet Sarah W. Fabio (an extract from which appears below). The film was produced by her daughter Cheryl at the time of these albums' recordings as part of her thesis project at Stanford University, receiving a restoration grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation in 2012 which, along with these recordings, will help to maintain her mother's rich legacy for generations to come. 

Jujus​/​Alchemy of the Blues & Together to the Tune of Coltrane's “Equinox” by Sarah Webster Fabio are reissued on Smithsonian Folkways and are both available now.