Adele Sebastian - 1981 - Desert Fairy Princess

Adele Sebastian

1981

Desert Fairy Princess

01. Desert Fairy Princess 8:56
02. Belize 5:28
03. I Felt Spring 6:56
04. Man From Tanganyika 8:12
05. Day Dreamer 5:43
06. Prayer For The People 2:32

Bass – Roberto Miranda
Drums – Billy Higgins
Flute, Vocals – Adele Sebastian
Marimba – Rickey Kelley
Percussion – "Daoude" Woods
Piano – Bobby West

Adele Sebastian was an Afro American jazz flutist and singer, active from the early 70s (when she was still a teenager) until her untimely death at the age of 27 in 1983 from a kidney failure. In fact she had been depending on monthly dialysis to stay alive for years. She lived through and for the music and you can hear it on her only solo album “Desert Fairy Princess” which was first issued in 1981. The mostly acoustic instrumentation brings a very natural and therefore rather retrospective sound considering the year the album was recorded. Adele and her band pull it off right from the start as if it had been 1966 and it was time for a revolution to shake the dust from the old time jazz. In a perfect way she mixes classic American vocal jazz elements with playful and more free passages, Latin music and tribal African sounds in the lengthy and quite rhythm oriented “Man From Tanganyika” and makes the title track start with a mystical “Allahu akbar“ chant while it turns more and more into a dark and gloomy song with something like a psychedelic edge reminiscent of Pharoah Sanders on his early works. Wild rhythms from drums, percussions with tons of bells and chimes weave a thick groove carpet and conjure a magical atmosphere. Those jazz aficionados who love the mid 60s John Coltrane, his sidekick Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane will go crazy for this album.

The name Adele Sebastian likely doesn’t ring bells in broader jazz circles, but it should. During her lifetime, a tragically short span of 27 years due to kidney failure, she played flute alongside a number of prominent West Coast jazz musicians, and was a member of pianist Horace Tapscott’s Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, a community arts collective offering local jazz and music education to students across Los Angeles. In its heyday, the Arkestra would perform in prisons, hospitals and churches, but didn’t record its first studio album until the late 1970s.

For Sebastian, a trained musician with an interest in Pan-Africanism, performing in the Arkestra married her love of art with her sense of Black pride. “I want to be an inspiration to all people,” she once said. “I strongly believe in, contribute to and support the preservation and education of the black arts. For these are my people and our contributions are priceless.”

Sebastian was born in 1956 in Riverside, California to a mother, Jacquelyn, who played piano, and a father, Malvin, who played saxophone. Her brothers were singers and Sebastian took up the flute at a young age. She played through high school, then went to California State University, where she majored in theatre and minored in Pan-African Studies. Reportedly, this is when she started making her way through the scene, quickly earning a rep through her artistry. In 1973, Sebastian co-wrote, staged and choreographed the Black History musical It’s A Brand New Day. Five years later, her flute could be heard across the Arkestra’s studio work. A funk-driven ensemble version of her track, “Desert Fairy Princess,” appeared on Live At I.U.C.C., the band’s 1979 album.

In 1981, Sebastian released what would be her only solo album: Desert Fairy Princess, a 38-minute spiritual jazz suite that brought her creative ambitions to the fore. Featuring Bobby West on piano; Daa'oud Woods on percussion; Billy Higgins on drums; Roberto Miranda on bass; and Rickey Kelley on marimba, the album conveys matters of the soul in ways that align with Sebastian’s aesthetic. These songs are incredibly emotive, her flute billowing amid the simmering hum of Higgins’ drum and West’s radiant piano.

There’s a palpable joy emanating here; on arrangements like “Belize” and “I Felt Spirit,” Sebastian’s playing sounds light and effervescent, the sound of a woman with the world to gain. The same went for “Man From Tanganyika,” her version of McCoy Tyner’s original. Where his track focuses on the piano as its lead instrument, Sebastian’s arrangement rightfully puts the flute center stage. Elsewhere, on “Day Dream,” it’s as if she’s reflecting on her past. Yet there’s no sorrow; instead, she can only smile when pondering freedom. “I’m looking back on my yesterdays,” goes a line from the track. “I’ve made brand new plans just to fit my ways.” The lyrics land differently now; Sebastian passed just two years later.

It’s been said that she was adored musically and personally. I can see that. And while I try to avoid comparisons between artists, Desert Fairy Princess hits me the same as Roberta Flack’s records. The artists are remarkably sincere in their work; the music itself feels guided by omnipresent forces. Forty years later, Desert Fairy Princess is a major part of Sebastian’s legacy. Her star shone brightly and faded too soon.

A special home to spiritual jazz on the west coast at the end of the 70s – and crucial for giving us some really unique talents like this! Adele Sebastian may have only ever cut this one album as a leader, but she's a hell of a flute player with a very deep, spiritual vibe – these sublime lines that soar and stretch out over modal rhythms – played by a totally hip group that includes Rickey Kelley on vibes, Roberto Miranda on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums and a bit of gembreh – a string instrument that brings a nicely exotic vibe to the record. The group's rounded out by Bobby West on piano and Daoude Woods on percussion – and the songs have this open flow that's wonderful – never too far out, but always searching – as the group soar through a version of McCoy Tyner's "Man From Tanganyika"

Linda Hill - 1981 - Lullaby for Linda

Linda Hill

1981

Lullaby for Linda

01. Leland´s Song 14:10

02. The Creator´s Musician 10:12

03. Lullaby For Linda 11:15

04. Children 10:57

Bass – Roberto Miranda

Drums – Everett Brown Jr.

Flute – Aubrey Hart (tracks: 3)

Flute, Vocals – Adele Sebastian

French Horn – Fundi Legohn (tracks: 3)

Percussion – Virjilio Figueroa

Piano, Vocals, Liner Notes – Linda Hill

Tenor Saxophone, Clarinet – Sabir Matteen

Vocals – Jugegr Juan Grey

Producer Tom Albrach was the patron saint of Horace Tapscott and the Pan-African People's Arkestra. His large amount of money that seemed to need spending on a radical pianist and his communal, Watts area big band meant that Tapscott could record what he wanted when he wanted, and it also allowed opportunities for band members to occasionally record. 1981, which found Horace Tapscott himself recording frequently yet still recovering from his aneurysm in 1978, was a banner year for band recordings, and include both this excellent, soulful album from alternate PAPA pianist and "PAPA matriarch" Linda Hill and the equally amazing Adele Sebastian. Neither artist recorded a solo record again, though in Sebastian's case, that is likely the increasing kidney troubles that led to her death just two years later. Hill deserved more, but she also was fine with her role in the band. It was the use of her house all the way back in 1962 that allowed PAPA to form. Constantly rehearsing there, the band moved quickly from a small number of players to 18 and from all available descriptions were already a major force by the mid sixties when they began playing all over LA, though especially Watts, where the band lived communally. She continued to play with the Arkestra through all this time, with her piano being traded with Tapscott's (who would conduct solely while she was on it). This piano also had a quite different sound than Tapscott's. Still forceful but more elegant, and its sound lent itself well to the spiritual/modal music that was PAPA's music of choice.

She even got a few originals in the repertoire over the years, but she only turned to one that is known, "Leland's Song", for this record (and no versions of that would be released under Tapscott or PAPA's name until the posthumous issue of "Live at the Lighthouse" and later "Live at Century City"). This album, which utilizes a great cast of fellow PAPA band members, dug more into a vocal based spiritual music that allowed all three vocalists on the album (especially the pairing of Hill and Sebastian's voices) to shine. Each track has just a few lines for the vocalists to sing before moving into instrumental explorations of the themes, which are not too far removed from Tapscott/PAPA albums like "Live at the IUCC". She lets Sabir Matteen's tenor sax do a lot of the heavy lifting here, but she's always propelling him and others on with her wonderful piano work. Take the album highlight, opener "Leland's Song". It opens on Hill and Sebastian's voices intertwined and leads into stellar work by Matteen that propels everyone else forward. A secret weapon is the bass and drums combination of Roberto Miranda on bass and Everett Brown Jr. on drums. They are the backbone of nearly all of the early Tapscott recordings, and they keep the bottom end pushing and pulsing on this track and the album as a whole. In particular, they more or less (along with the percussion of Virjilio Figueroa) drive the closing track "Children", which is mostly a spoken word battle between Hill and Sebastian. As they talk about the music scene, Kwanzaa, and invented gossip, with occasional ululating from Sebastian or singing from both (some of which seems to be overdubbed), the track manages to sustain interest and keep the listener guessing as it moves through its eleven minutes, though it's a shame in some ways not to get a little more from the rest of the band.

There's plenty of that on the rest of the album. The title track is sung by Jugegr Juan Grey as an homage to the "matriarch", and second track "The Creator's Musician" finds Hill and Sebastian in a particularly spiritual moment, dedicating their music to a higher power and leading into some of the most gospel-based work by the band on the record. Ultimately, more albums likely would've brought out more sides of this near forgotten pianist. What's here is enough to show how potent she was as a composer and player. PAPA was truly made of musicians with lots of abilities. It required a devotion no other group outside of Sun Ra's Arkestra or perhaps Ellington's orchestra had, with songs being written first and foremost for the existing band members. In PAPA's case, they were also songs written BY the band members, and this recording is a great example of what they were capable of any given night with the band. Well worth searching out.

One of our favorite albums ever on the legendary Nimbus label – and the only set we've ever seen from pianist Linda Hill as a leader! The set's got the same open-ended, spiritually-expressive sound as Adele Sebastian's record for the label – and Sebastian's also a key part of the group, working here on vocal and flute, to give the album a richly righteous sound! The vocals are great, and often feature help from Jugeger Juan Grey – with more soul than usual for this sort of set, but still plenty of jazz elements too – with an offbeat quality that's almost like Oneness Of Juju – often used just to lead off a tune, before the solos come in strongly. Other musicians include Sabir Matteen on tenor, Roberto Miranda on bass, Everett Brown on drums, and Virjilio Figuera on percussion.