Black Music Month Festival

w/ Joe Warner, Tarus Mateen, & Charles Haynes

Joe Warner - piano

Tarus Mateen - bass

Charles Haynes - drums

The Dynamic Miss Faye Carol is known as an icon in the Bay Area and beyond, highly regarded for her powerful voice, astonishing versatility, and gift of connecting with her audience. Equally at home in jazz, blues, R&B, gospel, funk, latin, and hip-hop, she has developed her own authentic sound and unique delivery, delighting audiences young and old across the globe. After beginning her career with gospel music, Faye Carol made her name singing with Oakland blues and funk legend Johnny Talbot & De Thangs before forming her own trio and gaining fame in San Francisco's jazz, blues, and cabaret clubs of the 1970s and 80s. Over a 60-year career in music, this living legend has developed her own unique acoustic sound and style in Black Music - drawing from funk, blues, gospel, and straight ahead swingin' - and cultivated an audience that remains as diverse as her uplifting music. She has maintained a high level of musicianship in her groups, mentoring some of the Bay Area's brightest young talent including pianist Benny Green, bassist/composer Marcus Shelby, saxophonist/composer Howard Wiley, and her daughter, pianist/compser Kito Kamili. Her vocal proteges include international superstars Kehlani and Ledisi.

Miss Faye has shared the stage with Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, Pharaoh Sanders, Joan Baez, Billy Higgins, Albert King, Bobby Hutcherson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Buster Williams, Azar Lawrence, Steve Turre, Otis Redding, Dennis Chambers, Bernard Purdie, Lenny White, Robert Randolph, Mistah F.A.B., Henry Butler, Gary Bartz, Cedar Walton, Ledisi, Philly Joe Jones, Dorothy Donegan, Pete Escovedo, David Murray, Roy McCurdy, Jeff 'Tain' Watts, Chester Thompson, Charles Brown, and Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson, among others. Miss Faye is also a dedicated educator and founder of School of the Getdown. She has been honored with the proclamation of a city-wide “Faye Carol Day” in the City of Berkeley and inducted into the Oakland Walk of Fame, the Meridian Mississippi Walk of Fame, and the Pittsburg Entertainment and Arts Hall of Fame, and has received countless awards including the 2014 Bay Area Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Hero Award, Jefferson Award for Public Service, four Cabaret Gold Awards, Top Star Awards Entertainer of the Year, and a prestigious 2021 Hewlett 50 Arts Commission.

www.fayecarol.com

@thedynamicmiss

Johnny Talbot is a music pioneer, innovator, and one of today's most influential musicians. He is a world-renowned Texas guitarist, composer, and legendary bandleader.

What is a legend? According to Webster, it is a collection of stories about an admirable person known by tradition, worthy of myth. Johnny Talbot is truly a legendary musician. At a time when jazz organ trios dominated the Oakland music scene, Johnny organized the first funk band in Oakland. James Brown, Tower of Power, Marvin Gaye, Sly & The Family Stone, many local and national bands who performed in Oakland, were influenced by the music of Johnny Talbot & De Thangs.

This legend began in Kilgore, Texas. Johnny's father, a guitar player and minister, migrated with his family to California to work the shipyards. He joined the Good Samaritan Church of God in Christ. At this church, Edwin Hawkins, Freddie Hughes, Walter Hawkins, and Johnny Talbot were kids in the band and the choir trying to learn their crafts. This church blessed, nurtured, and provided inspiration for these future musical trendsetters.

The legend continued to grow in the 1960s where, as a teen, Johnny went to Alaska and became an apprentice of blues guitar pioneer, T-Bone Walker. After returning to Oakland and paying his dues in the local clubs The Showcase, Slim Jenkins, The Sportsman, Blue Mirror, Long Island, to name a few, Johnnt put together his band, 'De Thangs.'

The group proved to be both a solid headliner and versatile backup band. Their impressive talents caught the attention of the late and renowned promoters Charles Sullivan and rock impersario Bill Graham. Johnny Talbot & De Thangs were the first Oakland musicians chosen by Graham to play regularly at the Fillmore West. The band worked with Martha & The Vandellas, Jefferson Starship, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, the Grateful Dead, and Otis Redding, all with promoter Bill Graham. With Charles Sullivan, the original owner of the Fillmore Auditorium, the band toured with James Brown, Little Richard, and Aretha Franklin. In between these tours, Johnny served as guitarist for Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Etta James, Z.Z. Hill, and Big Mama Thornton, and spent a year as bandleader for Marvin Gaye.

Johnny Talbot plays Texas blues guitar. He is a poet, composer, and song stylist who has been a source of inspiration for countless musicians and entertainers. He has recorded for Atlantic, Kent, United Artist, Bulleye Blues, and Rhino Records. Johnny Talbot & De Thangs were founders of funk and are truly one of America's unique and legendary musical treasures.

www.johnnytalbot.com

Gladys “Bobi” Céspedes has been at the forefront of representing Cuban music in the Bay Area and internationally for over 40 years. Bobi’s music integrates Cuban folkloric and modern elements in an authentic and distinctive sound. Her resonant voice and dynamic stage presence lead audiences on a journey from Yoruba incantations to the Cuban son. She can belt out a rumba or move you to tears through a heart wrenching rendition of a classic bolero. Along the way she shares her narratives of family life and love, and the wisdom of Afro Cuban fables. Always present is her chambo—that vibrant Cuban soul–creative and resilient.

A vocalist in the Cuban son tradition, composer, band leader and educator, Bobi first won international recognition as director and lead vocalist for the award winning Bay Area band, Conjunto Céspedes. With Conjunto Céspedes, Bobi forged a unique sound that did not easily fit the salsa music category. As the dynamic star of the band, she led the local Latin music scene in the 90’s and toured internationally. She took a break from the Conjunto to record and tour with Mickey Hart, but soon returned to her calling as band leader, and singer/songwriter, establishing a band under her own name, which she has led for nearly 20 years.

The original compositions in the band’s new release, Mujer y Cantante, feature her distinctive voice and unique approach to the fusion of son, Afro Cuban music and jazz in a sound that’s irresistibly danceable. Returning to her roots in the Cuban son, Bobi boldly claims her place as woman and singer, paying tribute to a rich familial and cultural legacy, and providing lessons in resilience along the way. “In Mujer y Cantante Bobi gifts us with a collection of songs deeply rooted in the Cuban countryside where she was born, and full of heart and wisdom that serve as a magic elixir to facilitate our own transcendence in hard times.” (Umi Vaughan, PhD., author of Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance: Timba Music and Black Identify in Cuba).

The band has two previous recordings: Rezos and Patakín. Rezos, a blend of Cuban son and electronic beats, included the track “Awoyo,” a composition featured in season 4 of the smash Showtime series Dexter. (Other film credits include Les Blank’s Sworn to the Drum, and Peter Bratt’s, Follow Me Home. Her recording with Conjunto Céspedes, Na’ Ni Na’, was on the soundtrack for the 2006 film Half Nelson).

Among her accomplishments, Bobi performed at the festival inaugurating the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016, sharing the bill with such illustrious world music divas as Angélique Kidjo and Meshell Ndegeocello. Her sold out shows in tribute to Celia Cruz at the SF Jazz Festival were so popular she was asked to repeat the tribute two years later in another memorable sold out performance.

An offspring of a large Cuban musical family that kept alive African beliefs and practices, Bobi has been a leader and pivotal player in the thriving Afro-Cuban cultural scene in the Bay Area for nearly half a century. As an educator, performer and community elder, Bobi provides fresh ways for contemporary audiences to be touched by Cuban music and culture, furthering the legacy of such vocalists as Celina González, Celia Cruz, and Merceditas Valdés.

www.bobicespedes.com

Derick Hughes combines a rich, five octave voice that comes with captivating stage presence. His development started as a performer in the Young Musician’s Program at the University of California in Berkeley CA. Derick Hughes is Blue Soul and comes from a legacy, highly talented Bay Area vocal performer, Freddie Hughes, his father.

Derick’s velvet -like background vocals have been heard in performances with other artists on tour and in recording projects with musicians such as Roberta Flack, Norman Connors, Prince, The Spinners, Tower of Power, and Michael Bolton, Todd Rudgren, Narda Michael Walden, Ann Nesby, Michael McDonald, Rev. Issac Douglas, Saundra Crouch, and The Gospel Hummingbirds.

Derick's musical abilities are only a stepping stone to his other talent, acting, he has been seen in stage plays such as “ Is My Living In Vain“, produced by Benny Rodgers. “God’s Trying To Tell You Something” and “Somebody Ought To Tell God Thank You” both written and produced by Delilah Williams. “When A Woman Is Fed Up” written and produced by David Toliver and "Brother Dap” written and produced by the late Fred Jackson.

Stephanie Crawford was born in 1942 in Detroit, MI and lives and works in Oakland, CA. She completed her undergraduate studies at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI, and pursued a MFA at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

Crawford is a visual artist and celebrated jazz vocalist who has lived, worked, and performed in Detroit, New York, and Paris as well as in her current home of Oakland, California. In 1968, at age 26, Crawford was employed on an assembly line at the Chrysler automotive factory in Detroit. That same year, she underwent a new “male to female gender reassignment surgery” being offered by the University of Michigan “and never looked back.” Her fearless and enduring commitment to an authentic life on her own terms remains an inspiration to queer and creative communities across disciplines, geography, and generations.

Having established close friendships with a group of artists in Detroit, including fashion designers Claude Payne and Frederick Weston, Crawford eventually reunited with them in New York City in the early 1980s. In New York, she performed regularly as a vocalist in the city’s renowned jazz clubs, such as the Blue Note, and also at the Pyramid where she “always felt accepted and safe as my true self” alongside drag and cabaret performers. During this period, she also studied painting at Pratt Institute, where she developed a close friendship with Greer Lankton, a key figure of the East Village art scene. In 1989, Crawford moved to Paris and was awarded the Django D’Or for Best International Jazz Vocalist in 1993. She moved to Oakland in 1997, where she continues to teach, perform, and paint. 

Crawford paints from still life compositions that she constructs in her home-studio surrounded by walls layered with photographs, drawings, and ephemera that she describes as “memories, remnants, trinkets, objects d'art, and keys to the past.” Within this domestic space, she arranges and paints “artificial flowers” in vases, fruit, and various objects that she collects for their beauty. She paints from observation, moving freely between representation and abstraction, saying, “Abstraction is another form of representation.” Her deliberate marks pool and bleed color across the surface of the page: "You can't control it, you can try, but watercolor does what it wants. In most mediums, paint stays where you put it. Watercolor complies with gravity and parallels the improvisation of jazz.”

Crawford is represented by Gordon Robichaux in New York City and Rebecca Camacho Presents in San Francisco. Her work has been exhibited widely including in New York in (Nothing but) Flowers at Karma and in Souls Grown Diaspora at apexart (organized by Sam Gordon); in Los Angeles in A Page From My Intimate Journal (Part II) — at Parker Gallery (organized by Gordon Robichaux); and in By Appointment at Artist Curated Projects. In 2020, a profile on Crawford’s work was published in Hauser & Wirth’s Ursula magazine and her paintings were featured in The New York Times.

Netta Brielle is a uniquely gifted singer, songwriter, and actress with a special vocal tone that ranges from high and sweet to deep, warm and raspy. Born and raised between Berkeley and Oakland California, Netta first fell in love with music at a young age when her mother, despite their modest means, always found a way to nurture Netta’s early interest in the arts. Netta got her first big break when she participated in Oakland Native and Def Jam President, Shakir Stewart’s talent search "The Def Jam Mega Star Search.” Netta was signed to L7/Atlantic and released her EP entitled "580." Netta has gone on to work with artists and producers like Pharell Willams, TI, E40, Coko of SWV and many more! 2023 marks a new chapter in the life of Netta as she is ready to deliver new music that reflects her experiences, flaws and triumphs. Netta has a strong need to feel connected to her fans. She is a true believer of beating the odds as she views herself as a rose that grew from concrete. She wants listeners to feel every bit of her. “I want to connect to people’s hearts. Once I'm able to give my fans what artists like Janet Jackson and Mary J. Blige gave me, I will then have arrived."

@nettabrielle

Glen Pearson is both a noted pianist as well as the current head of music studies at the College of Alameda. He began studying piano at age six and was playing professionally by age fifteen. He has appeared on stage, television, and recordings with such notables as Regina Belle, Jimmy Scott, Diane Reeves, Faye Carol, Marlena Shaw, Bobby Hutcherson, Delfeayo Marsalis, and Will Downing. Mr. Pearson served for eleven years as the Musical/Band Director for the World Renowned Boys Choir of Harlem, and is currently the pianist for the Count Basie Band.

Bernard Anderson blows the saxophone in the soulful styles of King Curtis and Junior Walker, following in the footsteps of East Bay sax legends Bobby Forte and Morris Atchison. He has issued a solo CD, “Yes, There Is a Doctor in the House,” and has been featured on recordings by such artists as Taj Mahal and Queen Ida, as well as performing with dozens of musicians including Charles Brown, John Handy, Joe Henderson, and Mary Wells. The Bay Area Blues Society named Anderson Blues Saxophonist of the Year in 2005.

With Richmond, CA being home to some of the most influential hip hop artists of our time, Mani Draper is proving he's cut from the same cloth. Make no mistake, it's Mani’s writing that sets him apart, and it's his writing and producing for others that is elevating him as an important Bay Area artist. He has stood next to the likes of Locksmith, Crooked I and Nappy Roots and has collaborated with Domo Genesis…Mani has shined on production from IAMSU and Terrace Martin, and entered as the narrative voice on IAMSU’s critically acclaimed debut 'Sincerely Yours'.

Growing up being inspired by other Bay Area artist such as Sly Stone, Tony Toni Tone and The Hieroglyphics, Mani dreamt of being a part of something that represented unity, but also showcased freedom of expression and individuality. Upon returning from college Mani joined forces with several dynamic Bay Area musicians, singers, producers and all around influencers to form Brave Area: a collective that explores traditional sampling and live instrumentation, while taking full advantage of technology's advancements, resulting in a sound thats new and familiar at the same time.

Mani's beat driven melodic underground sound is somewhat generation-less, with lyrics that find a natural bridge between power and vulnerability. His 2015 release ‘The Unauthorized Biography of Ella Mae’ serves as evidence that Mani and Brave Area are elevating Hip Hop music and everything that it influences.

@manidraper

Host or Publisher The Dynamic Miss Faye Carol