Sarah Webster Fabio

Big Tip! Known for her contributions to the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s, Sarah Webster Fabio published a plethora of poetry collections and works of cultural criticism. Together to the Tune of John Coltrane’s “Equinox” is her fourth and final record for Folkways, and sees her vivid language and distinctive voice becoming enmeshed with a dynamic backdrop of exploratory jazz. Fabio pays homage to Black jazz and blues musicians Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and John Coltrane. Fabio’s “Together” is set to the tune of Coltrane’s “Equinox,” in which her words “compose the air.”

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 and works of cultural criticism, wrote for local and national publications, including Black World and Black Scholar, and recorded four albums with Folkways.