Black Women’s Roots Festival
Festival featuring The Dynamic Miss Faye Carol & Her All-Star Quartet
featuring Rickey Woodard & Tony Coleman, Lady Tramaine Hawkins, Lady Bianca,
Terrie Odabi, and Emerging Artist Le Perez
Address: 2020 Addison St, Berkeley, CA 94704
Doors at 3pm / Shows at 4pm
Black Women’s Roots Festival celebrates powerful, pioneering Black women of blues, roots, and gospel. Showcasing legendary artists, established performers, and emerging talent, this intergenerational, interdisciplinary program features the best vocalists, instrumentalists, and poets of roots music that you’ll find anywhere in the world! Join us for what is sure to be an historic afternoon of music and culture.
This project has been made possible in part by a Civic Arts Grant for Festivals from the City of Berkeley; by a grant from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, in partnership with the Walter & Elise Haas Fund and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; and by the California Arts Council, a state agency.
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.
fayecarol.com
Inducted in to the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1999, Lady Tramaine Hawkins is a gift and voice we came to know and love in the late ‘60s. She was literally born in church in the San Francisco Bay Area as her mother, the late Lois Davis, a gospel singer in her own right, left a church concert to give birth to Tramaine. At ten years of age she recorded her first single, “He’s All Right!” as part of a Gospel group known as the Heavenly Tones. Two years later the group was produced by Gospel legend, the Rev. James Cleveland. At fifteen, the Heavenly Tones accepted an offer to travel with Sly & The Family Stone – all except Tramaine. She chose to continue her education and remain in Gospel, and later to join Andre Crouch and the Disciples! In 1969 upon graduating from Berkeley High School, Tramaine joined the Edwin Hawkins Singers and was a part of the Gospel Music Revolution via the recording of “Oh Happy Day.”
Tramaine’s lead vocals on such classics as “Changed,” “Going Up Yonder,” “Holy One,” “The Potter’s House” (the list goes on and on) are absolutely incomparable. Enjoying a successful solo career, Tramaine remains a force to reckon with in the field of Gospel Music and Ministry. Known to be a trailblazer, she’s gone against the grain many times for the sake of catapulting Gospel Music to another level. “I never left Gospel Music and never will. No matter what I sing, or what the accompaniment/beat is, I always sing about the Lord, about what I believe, about what I live for… I know my heart is in the right place. I will always sing and go where He leads me.”
ladytramainehawkinsministries.com
Pianist, vocalist, and composer Lady Bianca has been thrilling audiences in the Bay Area and beyond for decades. She received her first musical education in the church and later studied at San Francisco Conservatory. In 1972, she played the role of Billie Holiday in the San Francisco stage production of Jon Hendricks’ Evolution of the Blues. She has recorded and toured internationally with John Lee Hooker, Willie Dixon, Taj Mahal, Van Morrison, Frank Zappa, Merle Haggard, and Sly & The Family Stone and has released 9 albums of her own, including 3 Grammy Nominated releases. She has appeared at San Francisco Blues Festival, Monterey Blues Festival, and Royal Albert Hall, and in 2002 was honored with “Keys to the City” from the City of Oakland.
“Terrie Odabi is easily the most dynamic blues and soul woman to have emerged in the Bay Area since Etta James came out of San Francisco’s Fillmore District in the Fifties. Terrie has a powerful set of pipes, writes terrific tunes, leads a kicking band and has onstage movements that perfectly match the rhythms of her material. Surely stardom awaits her.” – Lee Hildebrand, contributor to the *San Francisco Chronicle, *East Bay News Group and *Living Blues Magazine”
It has been proclaimed that Terrie Odabi is nothing short of West Coast Blues Royalty. It has been written that she is “easily the most dynamic blues and soul woman to have emerged in the Bay Area since Etta James came out of San Francisco’s Fillmore District in the ’50s.” Only a singer with Odabi’s combination of power and finesse could hold her own amid those kinds of comparisons. What sets Odabi apart from so many of her peers are the different shades of hurt, longing, bliss, and depth she brings to the music. The distinguishable character of her voice rings out with a rousing revival of faith and reverence that has a drenching rejuvenation and sacred renascence complexity. Her abundant soul and improvisational prowess has made her a crucial contributor to today’s Blues scene. Warmly embraced by Blues fans and peers alike, Terrie Odabi is one of the most respected talents in the Blues genre.
Emerging artist Le Perez is a graduate of Faye Carol’s vocal workshop, School of The Getdown and in 2017 won the talent competition Jazz Search West. With her gospel roots and possessing a natural blues feeling and authentic soulful delivery, she has been honing her chops performing the blues and fronting bands all around the Bay Area at clubs and festivals.
