Rickey Vincent data file

The Rickey Vincent Data File

About rickeyvincent.com
The idea for this site came about a few years ago when my previous site, "Funklore" was getting a lot of interest, but I was unable to update it. My brother, Teo Barry Vincent, a true PedroBellian Webmaster had designed it just for fun in 1997, but never gave me the codes to upload anything. And I didn't really understand how webpages worked anyway.

After returning to UC Berkeley for a Phd in Ethnic Studies in 2002, I managed to get a Ford Fellowship for minorities in higher education. With school paid for I promptly purchased a fancy new Imac in January 2004 and got upgraded like a mug. A few sessions with my nephew David Caro Greene and my brother Teo and I was uploading photos & thangs. Teo designed all of the wild flash animation on the front pages of the site, but has recently left town, so it may be awhile before I can update that again.

The site has been an avenue for me to tell some stories about thangs, such as how George Clinton came to write the introduction to my book, as well as promote some of my favorite people, such as Zootzilla and Funkyman. It was also a way for me to take an inventory of all the funky business I had been doing before I jumped back into higher education. The plan of course is to ultimately funkatize higher education, and take my funky biz to a higher and tighter level. So, rickeyvincent.com is silly and serious at the same time. I hope you enjoy it!.

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Professional background
I learned years ago that if I truly wanted to pursue The Funk with the freedom required to do so, that I would have to go to the Zone of Zero Funkativity and get a degree, and a job first. Therefore, along the road in pursuit of The Funk, I have a career in education.
Out of Berkeley High School in 1979 I got into UC Berkeley through a minority engineers program called the Professional Development Program (PDP). Not having any interest in Engineering or the Reagan Defense Industry in the 1980s, I began as an Astronomy major. After a summer internship in Arizona at the Kitt Peak national Observatory, (where I worked on a "Luminosity Function of the Galactic Nucleus" for Dr. Jeremy Mould ) and had a blast, I was told that it would take another 12 years of study to return as a professional Astronomer.
So I returned to Cal directionless, and as an afterthought, spent the summer of 1983 at KALX radio, and things took off. After taking a Black music history course with Music Professor Olly Wilson I found a calling. I became motivated to learn (and to teach) the history of black music through the 1980s.
I was also deeply inspired to be a writer by Prof. Roy Thomas, who nurtured me and my work from my high school days in PDP through my UC graduation ten years later. Around 1991 I got a hookup with the school paper, The Daily Californian, writing my own outrageous weekly column, "Below the Funk!"

I graduated in 1987 as an Ethnic Studies major, and worked in after-school programs until entering San Francisco State’s Master’s in Ethnic Studies program in 1991. With the support of Prof, Oba T’Shaka, Prof. Laura Head and Prof. Jose “Dr Loco” Cuellar, I zeroed in on ‘The History of Funk’ as a research topic and graduated in 1993.
Thanks to associate Dean Jim Okutsu, I was hired at SF State to teach introductory “Critical Thinking” courses in Ethnic Studies, which paid the bills and allowed me to explore a wide range of teaching methodologies.
I took my “History of Funk” idea to dozens of publishers, but St. Martin's press was the largest, and quickest, and one of only two that showed serious interest. After two frenzied years of work, the "funk book" was published in 1996.
After “Funk” was published, Ethnic Studies Dean Philip McGee allowed me to design and teach a course based on the book, originally titled “Protest Music Since 1965: Funk, Rap and the Black Revolution” I taught a variation of that popular class from 1997 to 2002 when I left SF State to return to Cal as a Phd candidate in Ethnic Studies.
Along the way I developed a new course called the “Hip Hop Workshop” and with the help of a core crew of students, and a set of turntables purchased by the Ethnic Studies College, the course became one of the largest and most popular ever in the College of Ethnic Studies.
I have since returned to UC Berkeley to pursue a Phd in Ethnic Studies, and to develop research for new books that I have been preparing for a decade now.

The family
None of this funky mess would be worthwhile if I didn’t have my family to make everything go. My wife Tess is the loveliest, hardest working and most generous person I’ve ever met. She is the Greatest Woman on the face of this earth, and I would be panhandling on Telegraph avenue right about now if it weren’t for her.

Now our two boys have her good sense and my funkativity. Let’s hope that’s enough to get them through the evil 2000’s.

Ted Vincent
Much of my penchant for writing probably comes from my dad, who wrote one of the definitive books about Marcus Garvey when I was 8 years old. His book “Black Power and the Garvey Movement” (Ramparts 1970) is still a worthy read for any follower of Garveyism.
But my dad also went on to write about jazz (“Keep Cool: the Black Activists who Built the Jazz Age”), sports (Mudville’s Revenge The Rise and Fall of American Sport) and Black Mexico, among others. One day I hope to write on topics as broad as these.
You can check his works out at:
http://members.aol.com/fsln/

Teo Barry Vincent WEBMASTER,

Teo is a multi-instrumentalist and multi-stylistic musician, composing, performing and producing. He is also a web designer. His web site is: http://www.Givnology.com with his continuous play music page: http://www.Givnology.com/compose.htm

David Caro Greene webmaster II

My nephew David Caro Greene has many talents as well as his skills constructing this site. Here he is jamming with Teo at my birthday party at KPFA last year. Also a UC Berkeley graduate, you can check out his latest ideas on his site:
http://www.berkeleycomposer.com

Click here to email Rickey Vincent: rickeyvincent77@yahoo.com