SARAH WEBSTER FABIO - Boss Soul / Jujus: Alchemy Of The Blues, NIKKI GIOVANNI - The Reason I Like Chocolate, VA - Poets Read Their Contemporary Poetry

 This Smithsonian Folkways Archival series reissues (mostly black) American spoken word artists in pre- and proto-hip hop forms. These readings show the roots of hip hop in Black Nationalist and Afrocentric 1970s poetry, before Jamaican ex-pats in New York added the dub DJ element not to soon afterwards. With a strong recent return to form for MC forefather Gil Scott-Heron, this is as good a time as any to check out some other key influences on rap music.

Both Nikki Giovanni and Sarah Webster Fabio appeared on last year’s Fly Girls! B-Boys Beware: Revenge of the Super Female Rappers set on Soul Jazz, which chronicled the rise and fall of women’s place in hip-hop. Boss Soul: 12 Poems By Sarah Webster Fabio Set To Drum Talk, Rhythms & Images (1972), summing up the key ingredients of hip hop in its title alone, is, along with Fabio’s Jujus: Alchemy Of The Blues (1976), a model prototype of righteous rap.

Nikki Giovanni’s The Reason I Like Chocolate (1976) features the funky peacock (peahen?) strut “Ego Tripping”, one of the revelations of Fly Girls!, while the rest is a set of short unaccompanied pieces that are begging to be sampled. Any takers?

Poets Read Their Contemporary Poetry is a live recording sponsored by the multi-ethnic Before Columbus Foundation. The performances are charged with a political/didactic edge, climaxing in a jaw-dropping reading by Amiri Baraka (see also our writeup of his '60s writings on jazz, Black Music, here) of his unflinching diatribe “Dope”, in which he conflates drug addiction (in this case, heroin) and the religious belief (and subservience) of Black America through the wild ravings and twisted rationality of a madman. You really must hear it.