The Blues on My Block: Discovering the Roots Music History of Downtown Berkeley

By Kyle Jackson, Archives Intern

I recently began working on a project to help catalog some of the treasure trove of recordings in the vaults at Arhoolie. When I began the task of compiling metadata and listening through these mostly unreleased tapes from Chris Strachwitz’s voluminous collection, I expected to learn a lot about the history of American roots music. I was especially enthusiastic to get a better sense of the musical landscape of the Louisiana and Texas borderlands, a region that figures prominently in my dissertation-in-progress. What I didn’t anticipate was that I would also be taking a deep dive into the musical history of my own neighborhood, Downtown Berkeley, just to the west of the Cal campus.

The very first tape I pulled to process was from the Berkeley Blues Festival of 1965, recorded less than a hundred yards from my front door, at Berkeley Community Theatre. Just steps from the park where I watch sunsets, rock pioneers Big Mama Thornton and Chuck Berry and soul legends the Chambers Brothers ripped through roaring sets in front of an exultant audience of rhythm and blues fans. This led me down an internet rabbit hole, where I learned about The Berkeley Folk Music Festival Project, spearheaded by SUNY Brockport history professor Michael J. Kramer (I also thoroughly recommend the project’s Instagram account (@berkeleyfolkmusicfestival). They don’t seem to host public concerts at BCT anymore, but there’s often live music of various sorts right outside at Martin Luther King Civic Center Park. Even on weeks when there isn’t a festival or a pow wow, there is usually a folk singer, a zither player, or a dobro maestro busking at the weekly Farmer’s Market in front of my apartment, and the mighty Freight & Salvage is just a couple of blocks away. There always seems to be accessible folk music in Downtown Berkeley for a rent-burdened grad student on strike for a living wage.