Jujus / Alchemy of the Blues

Funky riffs and jazz arrangements written and performed by her children and their band Don't Fight the Feeling underpin Fabio's poetry, giving her words gravity. "I feel that these [poems] represent the epitome of my experimenting with the integration of music and poetry in a Black idiom taken from the rich source of inspiration welling from the Black experience here in America," explains Fabio in the album's liner notes. Often referred to as the "mother of Black studies," Fabio is recognized for her contributions to founding the West Coast Black Arts Movement and for helping to establish Black Studies as an academic discipline. As a poet, performer, scholar, educator, and cultural critic, she published countless poetry collections, wrote for local and national publications, including Black World and Black Scholar, and recorded four albums with Folkways.