June is Black Music Month. Created in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, (today also known as African American Music Heritage Month) this month is a time to honor Black musicians, singers, and contributors to the music industry--past and present. As we celebrate these history music makers we also pause to honor Juneteenth.
Black artists from Oakland and the Bay Area have contributed greatly to the history and culture and we want to acknowledge and celebrate them this month with a little history lesson and listening options from OPL's digital collections. (Click on an artist's name to check out the playlist or album. You will need an Oakland Public Library Card to access/listen.)
Rhythm & Blues (R&B) and Soul Music.
During the 1980's and 1990's Oakland became a hub for R&B and soul music with groups such as En Vouge and Tony! Toni! Toné!.
In 1989, two Oakland natives Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy who were successful songwriters and producers created the all female singing group En Vouge. The group's debut album "Born to Sing" was released in 1990 and the single "Hold On" quickly became a chart topper.
The duo also produced the debut album for Tony! Toni Tone!. In 1986, brothers Raphael Saadiq, D'wayne Wiggins and their cousin Timothy Christian Riley formed the group and their first album was released in 1988 with the first single "Little Walter".
In 1984, Oakland's very own Sheila Escovedo better known as Sheila E released her debut album her The Glamorous Life. She recorded her first solo album with singer and musician Prince, whom she met at a concert while performing with her father, the legendary percussionist Pete Escovedo.
A Look Back at the Origins of Bay Area Soul Music
Although Soul and R&B music was at its height during the 1980's and 1990's groups like Tower of Power and Sly and the Family Stone laid a foundation for the Bay Area soul genre as well as funk music.
Sly and the Family Stone was a funk band formed in San Francisco in the 1960's. Funk music is a genre that fuses soul, rock and blues music and has created genres such as psychedelic soul and psychedelic funk/P-Funk.
The band was led by singer-songwriter Sly Stone and some of their top hits are "Dance to the Music" (1968), "Everyday People" (1968), and the album "Stand," which reflects the social consciousness of the 1960's.
In the 1970's sisters June, Bonnie, Anita and Ruth Pointer formed the Pointer Sisters. The group achieved mainstream success during the 1980's with hits such as "Jump (For My Love)" and "I'm So Excited." In 1985 they won two Grammy awards for the songs "Jump" and "Automatic". The group's popularity in mainstream culture made them some of the biggest icons of the 1980's.
Gospel
Gospel music is widely considered to be one of the most important African American musical traditions. Contemporary gospel music origins began with the Negro Spirituals created by enslaved Africans in the American South.
The majority of African American music genres Jazz, blues, Rock and Roll, Rhythm and Blues (R&B) and Soul can trace their roots back to gospel music. Additionally, many R&B singers got their start singing in a church choir.
Throughout the centuries of the African American experience, gospel music has provided messages of love, hope, and perseverance through the power of Jesus Christ.
In Oakland and Northern California, Black churches, many that are over 100 years old have made significant contributions to the world of Gospel music nationally.
The most well-known gospel artists from Oakland are Bishop Walter Hawkins, Edwin Hawkins and the Hawkins Family choir.
In the 1970's Bishop Hawkins founded the Love Center Church in Oakland. Members of the Hawkins family also formed a singing group under the same name. Edwin Hawkins formed The Hawkins Family singers with his siblings; Walter Hawkins, Lynette Hawkins, Feddie Hawkins, Carol Hawkins and Daniel Hawkins. These Grammy award winning Oakland natives help to evolve gospel music with their version of “Oh Happy Day," an international hit. 
The Bay Area is also home to other successful Gospel musicians.
Andre Crouch was a Los Angeles based gospel singer, however this legend was born in San Francisco.
Daryl Coley was a Grammy-nominated gospel singer who was born in Berkeley, CA, and raised in Oakland, Ca.
Terrence Kelly is the director of the Oakland Interfaith Choir, he is an Oakland native with musical roots from both his mother and father and he is based out of Oakland.
Rusty Watson was born in St. Louis, Mo. He is a Grammy-nominated choir director at Love Center Ministries and calls Oakland home.
Born in New Orleans, La and based in the Bay Area Dr. Helen Stephens was the Chapter Representative of the Northern California Chapter of the Gospel Music Workshop of America. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, but relocated to San Francisco, Danniebelle joined the gospel group of Andraé Crouch and the Disciples. She was featured on the classic Gospel recordings Soon and Very Soon and Take Me Back.
Steven Roberts, a Bay Area native is an award-winning gospel music writer and producer.
Born in Texas, and raised in Richmond, Ca, Dorothy Combs joined the Edwin Hawkins singers and was the lead vocalist on the Grammy Award-winning song, "Oh Happy Day." Today, she continues singing as a member of the Blues Broads.
Shirley Miller is an Oakland native and a notable gospel singer. She came to fame by being the original lead singer on the hit "Oh Happy Day." She currently is a member at City of Refuge Church
Blues and Jazz Music
Although Blues and Jazz are African American music genres that originated in the American south, the Bay Area is also a cultural hub of this music.
During the early 1900's through the 1940's the 1st wave of the Great Migration encouraged African Americans to move from the Jim Crow South to Northern cities in search of opportunities and they brought their culture including musical styles with them to their new homes.
This is how many cities in the West became hubs for Jazz and Blues.
Oakland and San Francisco became the top two cities for Jazz and Blues performances.
The Harlem of the West
San Francisco's Fillmore District is known as the "Harlem of the West," because it is the center for jazz music in the Bay Area.
The most popular Jazz singer from Oakland is the late Joyce Bryant. Joyce Bryant was a jazz singer and civil rights activist. She was born in Oakland in 1927 and had a flourishing career in the 1940's and throughout the 1960's. She was featured in mainstream magazines, film and television.
In the 1960's Oakland based jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and jazz guitarist Calvin Keys began their professional careers playing in clubs in the Bay Area.
In the late 1960's jazz keyboardist Gene Russell founded Black Jazz Records in Oakland, Ca.
Passing the Torch
Jazz and blues music and musicians has had a tremendous impact and influence on younger generations. One of the youngest creators of Blues music is the Fantastic Negrito. He is a multi-nominated Grammy winner, his album Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? won a Grammy award for Best Contemporary Blues Album.
Hip-Hop & Rap
From the first Hip-Hop artist in history to receive Diamond status for an album in Oakland's own MC Hammer to the lyrical and linguistic stylings of Vallejo bred Mac Dre and E-40, the Bay Area's impact on Hip-Hop is undeniable.
Since Hip-Hop's inception in 1970's in New York City, the West Coast has continually strived to define itself as proprietors of Hip-Hop culture.
As a result, artists like Egyptian Lover and Rodney-O & Joe Cooley out of Los Angeles produced the same electro-dance sound popularized by East Coast artists. This however, made these SoCal artists indistinguishable from the East Coast sound.
It wasn’t until the late 1980s that West Coast rap made a pivot into a raunchy and rugged style of hip-hop called Gangster Rap with breakout artists like Ice-T and Oakland-raised Too-Short, who released his highest selling studio album to date, Life Is...Too Short in 1988.
Gangster Rap, which captured the narratives of gang life, poverty, and crime became synonymous with what music listeners deemed West Coast Rap; subsequently putting West Coast rap artists on the map while also pigeonholing those looking to break into the industry.
During this era, the Bay Area witnessed the break of some of its most important gangster rappers –San Francisco’s RBL Posse and Rapping’ 4-Tay, Vallejo’s The Click and Mac Dre, Richmond’s Filthy Phil and honorable mention Master P, who started No Limit Records and Tapes from his small record shop in Richmond, CA; Hayward’s Spice-1, Oakland’s Richie Rich, The Luniz, Dru Down, 3X Crazy, and honorary Oakland resident Tupac Shakur.
Despite the gangster rap sound making waves across the West Coast in the 1990s, there were still artists who carved out their musical place in a different way and whose storytelling brought an additional perspective to living in California.
Oakland rappers and rap groups like Del the Funk Homosapien, Souls of Mischief, Saafir, Casual, Digital Underground, Askari X, Paris, The Coup, Conscious Daughters, and Zion I music pays homage to Hip-Hop’s Blues & P-Funk origins and acknowledges the city's political history of Pan-Africanism, and history makers the Black Panther Party.
Although both sides of the Bay Area rap spectrum spoke to the same issues of surviving traumatic living conditions and systemic oppression, these rappers’ approach emphasized lyricism, community, religion, and Afro-centricity.
In the 1990’s MC Hammer & Oaktown's 3-5-7 became the leaders in the the West Coast Gangster Rap explosion. The genre gained a new life in the 2000’'s when a playful, dance-oriented, alternative style of rap called Hyphy Music, whose origins are often credited to rapper Mac Dre, pushed itself into the national arena.
Hyphy Music
Hyphy or Hyper-active music, instituted a culture of care-free movements, attire, and new language that even Bay Area legacy acts like E-40 and Too-Short couldn’t deny, with their contributions to hyphy music producing some of their most notable musical works.
The Hyphy Movement sparked a Bay Area renaissance with artists like East Oakland’s Keak Da Sneak, North Oakland’s Mistah F.A.B., and West Oakland’s J. Stalin presenting unification of music across Oakland that focused primarily on fun.
The alternative nature of the Hyphy Movement garnered many of the younger acts that would arise in the late 2000s, 2010’s and now in the 2020's such as SOB X RBE, HBK Gang, The Pack, Trunk Boiz, Lil Kayla, Stunnaman02, Kamaiyah, Rexx Life Raj, Nef The Pharaoh, Larry June, Saweetie, and LaRussell.
The history of Hip-Hop in the Bay Area eloquently maps the many musical, cultural, and institutional shifts that have occurred in places like Oakland through storytelling.
Through these lyrical stories, Black music history is kept alive even as artists change their musical styles, cease making music entirely, or posthumously.
Over time as Hip-Hop and Rap music became more mainstream, musically acceptable, and racially diverse, the branches that hold this larger Black musical tree together have often become less visible.
The Hyphy Movement is seldom regarded as the alternative music form that it was and It broke the rules of Hip-Hop in a way that wasn't always applauded despite being a prime example of counter-culture. Now that Hyphy music is lauded as the Bay Area's most distinct cultural characteristic, it's become more marketable and mainstream, with few people lifting up the names of the artists who risked it all in support of the movement.
Ironically, this is the history of Black American music as a whole and further supports the need for continued remembrance and reverence of the Black musical tradition.
Relating Hip-Hop and Rap in the Bay Area to other musical genres like R&B and Soul, Gospel, Jazz, and the Blues, cements Bay Area Hip-Hop within a larger and fuller context of Black American music.
~ Co-Written by Mariyam Bey.
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