While the bands brought the blues, the community brought the color. Both served to uplift and celebrate North Richmond’s rich musical heritage on Saturday.
The 10th Annual North Richmond Music Festival brought a healthy slate of blues bands to the historic Shields Reid Park for a day of family-friendly activities. The free festival — a true community gathering sponsored by the City of Richmond, Chevron, Sims Metal, Mechanics Bank, Men and Women of Valor and others — is as important as it is fun.
“This event celebrates the rich musical heritage of North Richmond,” said DeJeana Burkes, a blues singer who has attended and helped organize every festival to date, and also performed Saturday. “The blues culture really thrived in this area post WWII, and we do this every year to honor those memories.”
The festival features free lunch and many children’s activities. New at this year’s event was a blues legacy booth providing history from the many blues clubs that existed in North Richmond during the era during and after WWII. The clubs existed to serve African American migrants who came to California from the South, many to work in the Kaiser Shipyards.
Also new to the festival: The Paint and Vibe booth, where kids and adults alike painted as they listened to the music.
Getting the community’s youth involved in the festival is crucial, said Dr. Henry Clark, a North Richmond native and well-known community activist who helped launch the festival.
“We have to carry the history and heritage forward,” Dr. Clark said. “Hopefully our younger people will carry it on. That’s what it’s all about.”
The blues legacy booth exhibited a North Richmond that was once packed with blues clubs. Club Savoy, Kozy Klub, Do Drop Inn, Fred’s Place, Brown Derby, Minnie Lou’s, Tapper’s Inn: these were just a few of the clubs that existed at the time, per the Richmond Museum of History.
“If you really wanted to hear the down-home blues, you had to go to North Richmond outside of Richmond,” filmmaker Dough Harris says in his documentary, Exploration of our History. “The blues really thrived because you had southern people, you had country people, and you had clubs that catered to them.”
Community advocate Antoine Cloird credited Burkes for keeping the festival, and heritage, going.
“DeJeana came on board and helped this to be what it is now,” he said.
And what it is now, is a single day of the year that in some part recaptures a once thriving music scene.
“Well, if you’ve never felt the blues, I can’t hardly explain. You know how it feels…It was a blues crowd, a beautiful crowd,” said the late Minnie Lue, owner of a famous North Richmond blues club (per Shirley Ann Wilson Moore’s book, “To Place Our Deeds.”)
[…] Read more from the original source […]
It is so important to keep the blues culture and Heritage alive music of the African-American.
AJ Jelani
Richmond’s favorite son!
Hello. And Bye.
This was a fantastic event that continues the legacy of North Richmond’s connection to the blues. I loved all the acts, but my favorite was that group Consonance and their “Good News Blues”. Awesome guitarist and vocalists. I will be back next year.
If you missed it, you missed a great Blues Festival. I’ve been to many and this one, although small, is right up there. The diverse crowd was having fun and the kids were too. I plan to be there again next year for my third time.
I enjoyed the North Richmond Blues Festival. Some very good music was offered by all the performers. By my estimation, the blues is alive and well in North Richmond. A wonderful festival.
I’m amazed, I must say. Seldom do I come across a blog that’s equally educative
and engaging, and let me tell you, you’ve hit the nail on the head.
The problem is something too few men and women are
speaking intelligently about. I’m very happy I found this in my
search for something regarding this.
What i do not realize is in truth how you’re no
longer really much more smartly-preferred than you might be now.
You are so intelligent. You know therefore considerably with regards to this matter, produced me in my view consider it from so many various angles.
Its like women and men don’t seem to be involved
unless it is something to accomplish with Girl
gaga! Your own stuffs excellent. Always handle it up!
Wow, this paragraph is nice, my younger sister is analyzing such things, so I am going to inform
her.
If some one needs to be updated with hottest technologies after that he must be go to see this
website and be up to date every day.
We are a gaggle of volunteers and opening a new
scheme in our community. Your site provided us with helpful information to work on. You’ve done a formidable task and our entire group will probably
be thankful to you.
What a stuff of un-ambiguity and preserveness of precious familiarity regarding unpredicted emotions.
It is appropriate time to make some plans for the long run and it’s time to be happy.
I have read this post and if I may just I want to counsel you few attention-grabbing issues
or tips. Perhaps you can write subsequent articles relating to this article.
I want to learn even more issues about it!
Hi, I do believe this is an excellent site. I stumbledupon it 😉 I may come back once again since I book marked it.
Money and freedom is the best way to change, may you be rich and
continue to help other people.
This i like. Cheers!
I like this website its a master peace ! Glad I found this on google .
naturally like your website but you need to check the spelling on several
of your posts. Several of them are rife with spelling problems and I find it very troublesome to inform
the truth however I will certainly come again again.
almost everyone in our family have hypertension, this disease is very common among older people,