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GAYE ADEGBALOLA – WILD AND SATISFIED

By Lawrence Lebo

Musician Gaye Adegbalola is an American treasure and
important figure in the American historical landscape. Born
Gaye Todd in 1944, in Fredericksburg, Virginia to a school
board member and jazz musician father and a civil rights
movement organizer mother, Gaye came up during a
monumental time and place in African American history. She
graduated in 1961 from a segregated high school as her class
valedictorian where she participated in numerous sit-in protests and
picket lines as a member of the civil rights movement. During the mid
60’s to 1970 she was involved in the Black Power Movement in New
York where she organized the Harlem Committee on Self-Defense.

In 1977 Gaye began studying the guitar. It would be her second
instrument as she had mastered the flute while in the high school
band. She and her guitar teacher, the late Ann Rabson (Ann
Rabson passed in 2013) would go on to form the group Saffire –
The Uppity Blues Women, notable for such tunes as ‘They Call Me
Miss Thang’, and ‘Middle Age Boogie’. Saffire disbanded in 2009
and Gaye continued on as a solo performer. We are fortunate
to have these works in which she shares the depths and soul
of her experiences.

Gaye Adegbalola’s anthology “Satisfied” on the VizzTone label
includes selections from nine of her solo projects. There are 20
tracks, 15 of which are originals. The work pays homage to the
classic blues women who pioneered the genre. In that
“wild women” spirit Gaye channels her feminist and her
African American experience. On track 15, the second-line,
‘Nothing’s Changed’ Gaye sings, “Washed and ironed all the white folks
clothes, Nursed their babies, now she works in nursing homes, Had to be twice as good to get
half a chance, Still fired first and hired last, They talk about a glass ceiling, but don't you know,
She's down on her knees on a concrete floor”. This album is a wonderful collection of the
79-year-old Adegbalola’s body of work.

I asked Gaye Adegbalola about her life and her work. This is what she told me ........

LL: Congratulations are in order on your recent marriage! I’d love to hear all about the
wedding please.

GA: I could fill this entire interview if I share “all about the wedding.”!!! Suffice it to say it was
more than I ever dreamed it could be. So much of my life I've lived in the closet, so it was love
made visible!! Our respective sons gave us away. Small, with just 40 family and friends. Had
there been more people, there would have been a love explosion!!