Goapele at San Jose Jazz Summer Fest at Plaza De César Chávez

Blessed with abundant soul and fluent in hip-hop’s rhythms and flows, singer-songwriter-producer Goapele’s warm singing captures listeners’ hearts like a fond childhood memory. Since Closer, her debut release from 2001, the Oakland native has been known as a wise storyteller as well as an imparter of wisdom.

Now based in Southern California but still retaining her East Bay ties, Goapele has been drawing on her insights and instincts as heard on her latest effort, the Dreamseeker EP. Released in May 2017, its ten tracks showcase the R&B and neo-soul practitioner’s social activism advocacy and encouragement of personal development. The half-South African, half-Israeli-American mother doesn’t eschew good old-fashioned L-O-V-E, though, as heard on “Secret,” Dreamseeker’s impossibly sensual opening track....

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Blessed with abundant soul and fluent in hip-hop’s rhythms and flows, singer-songwriter-producer Goapele’s warm singing captures listeners’ hearts like a fond childhood memory. Since Closer, her debut release from 2001, the Oakland native has been known as a wise storyteller as well as an imparter of wisdom.

Now based in Southern California but still retaining her East Bay ties, Goapele has been drawing on her insights and instincts as heard on her latest effort, the Dreamseeker EP. Released in May 2017, its ten tracks showcase the R&B and neo-soul practitioner’s social activism advocacy and encouragement of personal development. The half-South African, half-Israeli-American mother doesn’t eschew good old-fashioned L-O-V-E, though, as heard on “Secret,” Dreamseeker’s impossibly sensual opening track.

“I’m a woman, but I’m also a whole person who won’t be confined to any one box,” she says. “Nobody is just one thing. Within any race, within any genre and within any neighborhood, there’s so much diversity. As artists and especially as women of color, we have to be proud of that. I’m coming from an honest place and expressing the different parts of myself that make me whole.”

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