“Black August is honored every year to commemorate the fallen freedom fighters of the Black Liberation Movement, to call for the release of political prisoners in the United States, to condemn the oppressive conditions of U.S. prisons, and to emphasize the continued importance of the Black Liberation struggle.”

For additional information on Black August visit The Black Collective

“Who was Joe Capers? If you were in Oakland in the ‘80s and ‘90s, you’d have heard of the likes of Tony, Toni, Tone, young MC Hammer, Digital Underground, Too Short and Dawn Robinson of En Vogue, just to name a few, and back then there were only a few home studios. Joe Capers, aka Blind Joe, a blind musician and producer, was one of the creators of the sounds of the Oakland music scene in the 1980s and early 1990s. 

Joe Capers and friends built the first completely accessible studio in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was in the Oakland hills, opened in August 1989. Capers’ studio recorded the artists named above and many more who went on, as we now know, to be legends in the Hip-Hop and Soul arena locally, nationally and internationally. Joe Capers took youth off the streets of Oakland and taught them to produce and engineer, making his studio affordable in a time before home recording studios had become what they are today.”