The Power Of The Spoken Word Posted by Junior

Bama The Village Poet: I Got Soul From: Ghettos of the Mind [Aware, 1974] Sarah Webster Fabio: A Mover (Place In The Sun) From: Boss Soul: 12 Poems by Sarah Webster Fabio [Folkways, 1972] Dana Bryant: Margaret (Second Cousin) From: Wishing from the Top [Warner Brothers, 1996] I've long been a fan of spoken word records, when done badly they can be painfully righteous and hard on the ears, when done well they can hit home with a soulful power that is almost unbearably truthful. For the post today I thought I'd avoid the usual examples of artists such as the Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron and instead pick out a few of my lesser known favourites from the collection. Bama The Village Poet is the artist whose sound is most rooted in funk though that's probably as much to do with him being backed by Bernard Purdie than anything else. An eleven track lecture of the ills of modern society that covers everything from racism to drug abuse it's a powerful piece delivered with gravelly intensity by Bama and was released on Chess so it's no surprise that it's mixed beautifully. Addressing his audience in a similar way to Last Poets and Heron, I Got Soul picks apart Bama's experiences as a youth in America and brutally rips away the nostalgia tinged view of what its was like to live in Mid 20th Century America as a black man while at the same time refusing to let it beat him down. Going further back to 1972, Sarah Webster Fabio's Boss Soul is delivered to a more mellow accompaniment and also details the troubled society she saw around her. Although her other album from the same year is more in a funk vein the track that has always hit me hardest is the closer of Boss Soul: A Mover. Starting with a solitary female voice singing in the most mournful way imaginable the track leads in with a male narrator before Sarah spits her lines of poetic imagery over the softest of melodies. Absolutely magnificent. Finally, something from our more recent past. When I first heard Dana Bryant's Margaret I, perhaps foolishly, assumed that this was an old recording from a more mature woman so was somewhat surprised when the album was released and the woman pictured above was standing there (this was in the days before Google my friends, dark days indeed). Although the rest of the album is an interesting combination of poetry and hip hop beats it was always the mixture of traditional spoken word arrangement with raw emotion of Margaret I went back to as Dana takes you from an idyllic childhood tale to something all together darker. I haven't heard anything from Dana since which seems a shame as there was undoubtedly a wealth of ideas and approaches left to explore in her unique way.