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

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

. Vincent 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 mi ...

, and won the

ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadc ...

Foundation Deems Taylor Award for Music Writing in 1997. He also authored another book titled: ''PARTY MUSIC: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers Band and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music (Lawrence Hill Books, 2013), which details the role the Civil Rights Movement had on transforming

Soul Music Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in African-American culture, African-American African-American neighborhood, communities throughout the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps ...

into something more than music.'' 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 Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

, and saw funk and soul bands play in the

Oakland Coliseum Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum, often shortened to the Oakland Coliseum, is a multi-purpose stadium in Oakland, California, United States. It serves as part of the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum Complex, located next to Oakland Arena. In 2 ...

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 (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

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, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

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, United States. Founded as a junior college in 1935, the college plays an important local role, enrolling as many as 1 in 35 San Franc ...

, San Francisco State University and

California College of the Arts The 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 ...

Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...

. Vincent has hosted the

KPFA KPFA (94.1 FM) is a public, listener-funded talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed o ...

radio program "The History of Funk" since 1997. In 2001, HUSH concerts 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 Music of the African diaspora is a sound created, produced, or inspired by Black people, including Music of Africa, African music traditions and African popular music as well as the music genres of the African diaspora, including some Caribbean mus ...

and

culture Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...

, 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 Rock music historians {{US-historian-stub