Rickey Vincent is an American author, historian, and radio host based in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

. He is the author of ''Funk: The Music, the People and the Rhythm of The One'' (St. Martin’s Press, 1996), which encompasses the history of

funk music Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the m ...

, and won the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor Award for Music Writing in 1997. Vincent grew up in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

, and saw funk and soul bands play in the

Oakland Coliseum Oakland Coliseum, currently branded as RingCentral Coliseum, is a stadium in Oakland, California. It is part of the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum Complex, with the adjacent Oakland Arena, near Interstate 880. The Coliseum is the home b ...

in the 1970s. He obtained a Master of Arts in

Ethnic Studies Ethnic studies, in the United States, is the interdisciplinary study of difference—chiefly race, ethnicity, and nation, but also sexuality, gender, and other such markings—and power, as expressed by the state, by civil society, and by indivi ...

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different ...

in 1987 and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

in 2008. He is a lecturer at Berkeley,

City College of San Francisco City College of San Francisco (CCSF or City College) is a public community college in San Francisco, California. Founded as a junior college in 1935, the college plays an important local role, annually enrolling as many as one in nine San Franci ...

, San Francisco State University and

California College of the Arts California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996 it opened a second campus in Sa ...

in Oakland. Vincent has hosted the KPFA radio program "The History of Funk" since 1997. In 2001, HUSHconcerts founded the San Francisco Funk Festival based upon Vincent's academic work to place the musical genre in a societal and artistic context. Vincent has appeared on television documentaries involving

black music Black music is a sound created, produced, or inspired by black people, people of African descent, including African music traditions and African popular music as well as the music genres of the African diaspora, including Caribbean music, Lat ...

and

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...

, including multiple episodes of '' Unsung''. In 2013, Vincent released his second book, ''Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers Band and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music'' (Chicago Review Press 2013).

References

External links

Kpfa.orgOfficial website
African-American historians American male non-fiction writers American music historians African-American non-fiction writers American non-fiction writers American writers about music Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area Radio personalities from California University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni People from Oakland, California Historians from California African-American male writers {{US-historian-stub