When Norman Sylvester was just 12 years old, long before he earned the nickname "The Boogie Cat" or shared stages with blues legends, he embarked on a transformative journey from rural Louisiana to Portland, Oregon. Leaving behind a childhood steeped in the simple pleasures of Southern life – foraging for wild muscadine grapes, fishing in bayous, and the comforting rhythm of his grandmother’s gospel singing while churning butter – Sylvester felt he was leaving a paradise when his father summoned him to the distant West Coast in search of better opportunities. The year was 1957, and Oregon, at that time, carried a heavy legacy of hostility towards Black families. From 1844 to 1926, exclusionary laws actively barred Black people from settling in the state, exemplified by the Oregon Donation Land Act of 1850, which granted vast tracts of land to white settlers while denying any claims to Black individuals. Oregon’s resistance to ratifying the 15th Amendment and its state Supreme Court’s sanctioning of racial discrimination in public places underscored the challenges faced by the Black community. By the 1920s, the state was home to the Ku Klux Klan’s most significant chapter in the West.

Despite this unwelcoming climate, Black pioneers were among Oregon’s earliest settlers, diligently carving out lives and striving for equality. The Portland chapter of the NAACP, established in 1914, proudly stands as the oldest continuously operating chapter west of the Mississippi River. However, the state’s entrenched anti-Black policies served as a powerful deterrent, resulting in a Black population comprising less than 1% of Oregon residents by the time Sylvester arrived, with Portland’s Black community being the smallest among major West Coast cities. This stark contrast to his Southern upbringing led to immediate culture shock as Sylvester stepped out of Portland’s Union Station.

His first destination in this new urban landscape was a barbershop near the intersection of Williams Avenue and Russell Street in North Portland, where he needed a haircut before starting seventh grade at his first integrated school. Upon reaching the bustling intersection, he was met with a vibrant scene that strikingly resembled his Louisiana home. A distinguished brick building with an onion-shaped cupola graced one corner, while homes and businesses – a cafe, a drugstore, a produce market – lined the others. Most notably, he observed African Americans actively engaged in business, driving well-appointed cars, and exuding confidence. He later likened the atmosphere to Harlem, but on that particular day, it was a potent reminder of the community he had left behind. Despite the thousands of miles separating him from the familiar muscadine vines of his grandmother’s fence, standing at that corner, Sylvester felt a profound sense of belonging, noting, "The place just embraced me. Everybody was singing the same song, if you know what I mean."

This very intersection was once the vibrant heart of a neighborhood known as Albina. In the early 1900s, Black Portlanders, many employed as railcar attendants, began to settle in this area due to its proximity to Union Station. Over subsequent decades, discriminatory housing practices by landlords and institutional policies, such as a 1919 Portland Realty Board ruling that deemed it unethical to sell homes in white neighborhoods to non-white buyers, systematically excluded Black residents from other parts of the city, further concentrating the community in Albina. By 1940, more than half of Portland’s Black population, numbering just under 2,000 people at the time, resided within Albina’s boundaries.

The onset of World War II dramatically altered Portland’s demographic landscape, bringing over a hundred thousand newcomers, including approximately 20,000 African Americans, to work in the city’s burgeoning shipyards. Among these migrants were Sylvester’s parents, aunt, and uncle, who found housing in a defense development called Vanport. Constructed behind a railroad embankment in the floodplain of the Columbia River, Vanport became the nation’s largest wartime housing project, with African Americans comprising about a quarter of its more than 40,000 residents, thus forming Oregon’s largest Black community by a significant margin. Following the war, as workers began to depart Vanport, Sylvester’s mother returned to Louisiana, but his uncle secured employment at a local hospital, prompting the rest of the family to remain in the vicinity. Still barred from most neighborhoods due to their race, they continued to reside in Vanport. It was there, on Memorial Day in 1948, that the Columbia River, swollen by spring rains and snowmelt, breached the embankment and inundated the city. Within 40 minutes, Vanport was submerged, resulting in at least 15 deaths and leaving over 18,000 residents, a third of whom were Black, homeless.

Sylvester’s family, along with most other African Americans displaced by the flood, found refuge in Albina, the only Portland neighborhood that welcomed them. By the time Sylvester settled in the city, four out of every five Black Portlanders lived within this district. Redlining practices, a lack of public investment, and negligent landlords contributed to overcrowded and sometimes dilapidated housing conditions. Nevertheless, Albina remained a close-knit and lively community, fostering the growth of Black-owned businesses, churches, and gathering places. "Everything you needed in a community was right there," Sylvester recalled.

Central to this thriving community was its music. In the decades following Sylvester’s arrival, Albina resonated with an abundance of musical talent. Gospel choirs filled churches, while soul bands commanded the stage at the Cotton Club, then the preeminent soul music venue in the Pacific Northwest. Nearly every night, jazz, blues, and funk ensembles could be heard in the neighborhood’s numerous venues, including teen clubs and all-ages spaces, with bands frequently forming in basements, backyards, schoolrooms, and churches.

At the age of 13, Sylvester’s father, working two jobs – one at the hospital by day and another at the foundry by night – saved enough to purchase him a guitar. While it wasn’t the coveted shiny red electric he desired, but rather an $11.95 pawnshop acoustic, his father promised the electric guitar upon learning three songs. In Albina, finding music teachers was not difficult; Sylvester learned his initial guitar licks from a Creole man who owned his family’s home, and later, a fellow high school student mentored him in the blues. A quick study, Sylvester found the guitar became a source of empowerment. As a shy country boy from the South who stuttered when he spoke, he often felt overwhelmed by Portland’s urban youth, but "with my guitar in front of me, I could express myself," he explained.

Now 80 years old, Sylvester has continued to express himself through music. His first band, Rated "X," was among Portland’s pioneering soul groups. They recorded a single in 1972, and their local success was gaining momentum when Sylvester’s trucking company assigned him to a graveyard shift, forcing him to leave the band. Undeterred, he continued playing, eventually establishing himself as a prominent blues musician. The Norman Sylvester Blues Band has now been performing for four decades, and he has shared bills with luminaries like B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and Mavis Staples, earning induction into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame in 2011.

Sylvester’s considerable achievements are just one facet of a rich tapestry of talent. He is part of a broad and interconnected community of Black musicians, educators, and arts advocates who converged in Albina during the latter half of the 20th century, transforming the region into a significant musical hub in the West and forging a legacy that endures today. Until recently, however, the vibrant narrative of Albina’s musical history existed primarily within the memories and personal archives of its inhabitants, a generation of musicians now nearing the end of their lives.

By the early 2000s, when Bobby Smith moved to Albina, the neighborhood bore little resemblance to the predominantly Black community of Sylvester’s youth. Smith, a young white schoolteacher and occasional freelance music journalist, was aware of Albina’s lively jazz scene in the 1940s and ’50s, a period chronicled in Robert Dietsche’s 2005 book Jumptown. Yet, the public narrative of Black music in Portland seemed to cease abruptly in 1957, leaving him to question what happened next. As an avid record collector, Smith embarked on a quest for commercial recordings by Portland’s Black musicians from the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, scouring used record stores and consignment shops with limited success. The scarcity of such recordings was striking; Sylvester’s 1970s single with Rated "X" was one of the few he could find from those decades. Simultaneously, Smith engaged with neighbors, frequented local parks to absorb the sounds of the community, and spent time at Clyde’s Prime Rib, one of the city’s few venues regularly featuring elder Black performers.

In 2014, Smith began DJing for XRAY-FM, a nascent community radio station broadcasting from Albina. Armed with a growing collection of historical recordings, he started inviting local musicians to the station to discuss them on air. His initial guests included Calvin Walker, a drummer, bandleader, and self-proclaimed "child of Albina." Walker’s initial 30-minute interview stretched into three hours as he shared his life story and, in doing so, mapped out an entire ecosystem of musicians and educators who had shaped – and been shaped by – Albina. "If you’re really curious about this," he told Smith, "here’s a list of people you need to start talking to. And I’ll help you."

Smith’s weekly radio show soon became a vital conduit for elder Black musicians to share their narratives. Despite the systemic barriers that had limited their access to the recording industry, Albina’s musicians had diligently documented their own work, preserving a wealth of unreleased recordings: demos, reel-to-reels, cassettes, and VCR tapes. This ever-expanding collection of music and memorabilia pouring into the station revealed an extraordinary legacy of Black arts and culture in Portland, representing an untold chapter of Oregon’s history.

In 2015, Walker, Smith, and Ken Berry, another local musician and community leader, established the Albina Music Trust (AMT). Their ambitious mission was to preserve thousands of obsolete and decaying media items and make them accessible to everyone. Elder engineers generously donated equipment and shared their expertise, teaching volunteers how to operate archaic machinery. Each item was meticulously digitized and uploaded into a categorized database. After a decade of dedicated work, in 2024, AMT officially launched the Albina Community Archive, believed to be the only community archive in the United States exclusively dedicated to the restoration of a Black community’s musical heritage. The online repository now houses over 13,000 items sourced from 180 contributors, encompassing not only music – including live recordings, out-of-circulation albums, and unreleased demos – but also film, newsprint, posters, handbills, and oral histories. This extensive collection serves as the archive’s foundation, functioning more as a seedbank of historical artifacts than a static museum, enabling these materials to be brought to life through diverse projects extending far beyond the website. An art installation titled Wall to Wall Soul showcases restored and recolored posters and photography in striking images exhibited throughout the city and now permanently displayed at Clyde’s Prime Rib. Under the record label of the same name, AMT releases vinyl albums featuring previously unheard music from Albina’s past, as well as new works by contemporary local artists. An audio tour, The Albina Soul Walk, guides listeners on a mile-long, music-infused journey through Albina, highlighting the locations of former venues and gathering places, with musicians and club owners recounting the neighborhood’s history. Listening to the tour creates an immersive experience, as if donning 3D glasses, bringing an unseen dimension into sharp focus. Even after removing the earbuds and re-entering the present-day sounds of the city, the voices from the tour lingered, imbuing the neighborhood with a new resonance.

One morning last summer, I met Smith, Walker, and Berry at AMT’s modest office in northeast Portland. The space, barely a few hundred square feet, felt like a walk-in closet, lined with shelves of neatly labeled boxes and overflowing with audio equipment spanning various eras – turntables, reel-to-reel machines, cassette players, and CD drives. A grid of framed record sleeves adorned a vibrant lime-green wall, and the air was filled with the smooth sounds of jazz. Settling into one of the four mismatched chairs arranged in the cozy space felt more like joining a family around a warm kitchen table than attending a formal board meeting. My experience that day mirrored Smith’s initial encounter with Walker: I anticipated a brief hour-long conversation, but one story naturally led to another, extending well past lunchtime and culminating in a shared meal at a taqueria across the street.

Ken Berry arrived in Oregon from Kansas in 1953 at the age of four. His family settled near Laurelhurst Elementary in southeast Portland, where he became the school’s first Black student. However, two years later, after facing complaints from anti-integration neighbors, their landlord demolished their house, prompting the Berry family to relocate to Albina. It was there that Berry began playing piano during Sunday school at the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, earning 75 cents a day. He joined the choir at Jefferson High and, after graduation, began playing a Hammond B3 organ at The Upstairs Lounge, then Albina’s most prominent jazz club. It was there he met the late Thara Memory, a trumpeter from Florida who had played with artists like James Brown. Memory and his band were en route to Seattle when they stopped in Portland to perform at The Upstairs Lounge. However, Albina’s charm – its majestic trees and lively community – captivated him, and he decided to stay when his band departed for Seattle. Memory and Berry later formed Shades of Brown, one of numerous collaborations that would profoundly shape Albina’s musical landscape for decades.

Around the same time, not far from The Upstairs Lounge, Walker encountered Memory at another vital community hub: the Albina Arts Center. As a teenager, Walker frequently performed there with his jazz-infused funk band, The Gangsters. "Thara comes in one night and says, ‘Can I play your trumpet?’" Walker recounted. He handed over the instrument and was mesmerized by Memory’s playing. "I never played trumpet again!" Walker exclaimed. He continued on drums, and Memory joined him on trumpet. In the summer of 1970, the American Legion convention in Portland prompted the city to organize the Vortex 1 festival, the only state-sponsored rock concert in U.S. history, in an effort to divert potential war protesters. Although The Gangsters were not officially invited, they transported their equipment to the festival and arrived at the stage. When the manager informed them that all bands were already booked, Memory retorted, "But you don’t have any all-Black bands." Thirty minutes later, they were on stage. "We played for an hour and a half, and I think they even paid us!" Walker said, grinning.

Despite its historical significance, most retrospective coverage of Vortex 1, including books and documentaries, omitted this pivotal story, primarily because researchers were unaware of it. Much of Albina’s history resided within the community itself, not in institutional archives. "The public library and the Oregon Historical Society have existed for over a hundred years," Smith noted, "but in the 10 years we’ve been around, we’ve become the largest digital repository of Black arts and culture in the entire state of Oregon." Walker nodded in agreement, adding, "People are putting their lives in our hands because they trust that their story will be told accurately."

AMT is part of a burgeoning national network of community archives dedicated to preserving collective histories often overlooked by mainstream repositories. Over 300 such archives have been identified across the country, each documenting unique facets of American life, from LGBTQ experiences in the Deep South to Indigenous women activists and communities impacted by the death penalty. As control over historical narratives becomes an increasingly contested political tool, exemplified by governmental actions that have challenged institutions dedicated to preserving marginalized histories, community-based archives like AMT broaden the spectrum of voices authoring history, fostering a richer and more inclusive understanding of America’s past.

The Gangsters played for a few years, recording tracks at a studio in Vancouver, Washington. After the band disbanded, several members achieved notable success: two toured with B.B. King, another played with jazz icons The Crusaders, and Memory earned a Grammy. However, The Gangsters’ recordings were never released, languishing in a closet for four decades. Even Memory’s daughter, Tahirah Memory, a critically acclaimed Portland-based vocalist and songwriter, was unaware of these recordings until AMT rediscovered them in 2017. Tahirah, who performs around 90 shows a year, blending jazz and soul traditions, grew up immersed in Albina’s music scene, with musicians constantly visiting her home. Yet, she didn’t fully grasp the extent of the obstacles faced by these artists or their remarkable perseverance. "The archive fills in a lot of gaps," she explained, both personally and publicly. "In this country, there hasn’t been a huge invitation for Black folks to have a history." In 2018, AMT released The Gangsters’ album on vinyl, accompanied by a booklet featuring oral histories and photographs that narrated the band’s story. The release was celebrated with a sold-out album-release concert at the Alberta Rose Theatre, reuniting historic groups with contemporary musicians.

Witnessing the emergence of Albina’s past through AMT has been a profoundly healing experience for Tahirah. "The archive is as much about social change as it is about music," she stated. "It’s a record of how Black people have leaned on art to make a way." She described how, in the face of adversity, "this is what people with brilliance and light and determination do. Some of the best magic has come out of Albina because it was a place where not-great things happened."

By the time The Gangsters recorded their music in the 1970s, Albina had undergone significant transformations. Following World War II, Portland, like many cities across the nation, initiated "urban renewal" projects. Utilizing federal funds designated for clearing "slums," local governments demolished neighborhoods and repurposed the land for commercial and institutional purposes, displacing hundreds of thousands of residents. Black and minority neighborhoods were disproportionately labeled as "blighted" and razed under the guise of renewal. In a 1963 interview, James Baldwin starkly articulated the reality behind this euphemism: "Cities now are engaged in something called urban renewal, which means moving the Negros out. It means Negro removal; that is what it means." Portland was no exception.

In the late 1950s, the city demolished hundreds of homes in Albina to make way for Interstate 5 and the Memorial Coliseum. Then, in the late 1960s, Portland secured federal funds to raze 76 acres for the expansion of Legacy Emanuel Hospital. This land encompassed hundreds of residences, community gathering spots like the teen club Seven of Diamonds, and the commercial heart of Albina: the intersection of Williams and Russell. Black leaders organized to resist the city-sponsored destruction of their neighborhoods, recognizing that even where housing was rudimentary, "the community was thriving," as Walker described. Advocating for rehabilitation rather than demolition, organizers formed the Albina Neighborhood Improvement Project in 1961 and successfully halted the destruction of some areas slated for demolition, leading to the rehabilitation of hundreds of homes and the creation of a park.

However, other projects proceeded unabated. Neighborhoods in lower Albina were razed and replaced by the Portland Public School District’s headquarters and the Water Bureau. In the early 1970s, the city approved the hospital expansion. The intersection of Williams and Russell was condemned and demolished, with only the onion-shaped cupola surviving, relocated to a gazebo in Dawson Park a few blocks north. This project displaced 171 households, three-quarters of them Black. Yet, the hospital expansion never materialized, leaving the land vacant for the next 50 years. In total, "urban renewal" efforts destroyed over 1,100 housing units in Albina, along with dozens of businesses and community hubs. Subsequently, banks further redlined the remaining neighborhood, denying residents access to mortgage and home improvement loans. Those seeking to purchase homes or invest in businesses faced the choice of leaving Albina or borrowing from private, often predatory, lenders. This exodus led to a proliferation of vacant buildings by the 1980s, with one neighborhood activist counting 900 abandoned structures and urging the city to intervene.

As Albina’s businesses and clubs shuttered or were demolished, racial tensions intensified across Portland in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Downtown venues began excluding Black bands, fearing alienation of white audiences. Competition from other entertainment forms, such as late-night television and disco, coupled with new drunk driving laws and instances of police brutality, led to a decline in live music attendance. These factors converged, making it increasingly difficult for musicians to earn a living from gigs and exacerbating the problems stemming from chronic disinvestment – unemployment, gang violence, and the drug trade. Despite these challenges, music remained a vital force: "It was a way of maintaining camaraderie, a connecting piece for people’s spirits," Berry remarked. During these years, Albina’s musicians, educators, and community leaders redoubled their efforts to sustain Black music culture in Portland.

In 1976, Berry co-founded the World Arts Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to celebrating African American culture through community choirs, orchestras, marching bands, and after-school programs. An annual event known as "Keep Alive the Dream" showcased these ensembles and stands today as one of the nation’s longest-running tributes to Martin Luther King Jr. In an effort to reconnect musicians who had strayed from the scene and introduce new audiences to Black music traditions, Thara Memory helped establish a concert series called TimeSound. The inaugural performance in 1981 featured a 24-piece ensemble at the Civic Auditorium in downtown Portland, breaking down the racial barriers that often restricted access to downtown venues. Inspired by TimeSound, Albina’s musicians launched a similar big band and choir program for children. YouthSound brought together hundreds of students for weekly rehearsals at the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church. While many participants were Black, the program welcomed students of all backgrounds and spanned genres from jazz to classical. For many white students, it offered their first exposure to gospel music. This initiative led to a series of programs providing music education to Portland children who otherwise lacked access. Several alumni of these programs have since achieved international acclaim, including Domo Branch, Charlie Brown III, and five-time Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding, widely regarded as the most accomplished female jazz bassist alive.

While developing musical skills was often the primary outcome of these projects, their creators harbored a broader vision. As Berry recounts in an oral history included with YouthSound, an AMT album of the ensemble’s 1982 performance at Jefferson High, "Each person in the choir is an individual, and when we sing, we’re making sure to let one another know that, even though we’re different individuals, we’re all connected. We have to deal with the same things together. I’m talking about social justice. I’m talking about peace, joy, happiness. That’s what the music did for all of us that were in the choir."

In the school auditorium that day, Walker, Smith, and Berry recounted the Trust’s story with the kind of deep rapport forged through years of shared effort and problem-solving. Despite their differences in age and race, their mutual respect was evident, reflected in the seamless flow of their conversation. One man would share an anecdote, another would clarify a timeline, and the third would provide crucial context, creating a narrative that felt akin to watching a masterfully performed musical jam session. Later, Berry handed me a copy of YouthSound and requested a text upon my safe arrival home. That evening, as I listened to the album, the liner notes revealed a remarkable testament to teamwork: "It was all about listening," one student recalled. "Anybody could put out a tune. But your tune gotta match the person standing next to you. This was about teamwork. We needed to sound as one."

While their work often involves the literal preservation of the past, AMT’s ultimate focus lies in the future. "In another 50 years, we don’t want a couple of guys like me and Ken sitting around talking about the good old days," Walker stated. To this end, the Trust is collaborating with Portland schools and nonprofits to expand access to arts education while connecting students with the rich legacy of Albina’s Black music.

Last June, I attended "Rhythms of Tomorrow," one of 38 public events hosted by AMT in 2025. This event, a collaboration between AMT and Portland Public Schools, marked the district’s inaugural celebration of Black Music Month. On my way, I stopped for lunch on Mississippi Avenue, in the historic Albina district. The street was bustling with lunch-goers, predominantly white individuals in their thirties and forties, dressed in contemporary fashion. Nearby cafes advertised boba tea and artisanal donuts, while a boutique nursery offered expensive potted ferns. Yoga studios and brewpubs dotted the landscape.

Decades after city bulldozers tore through Albina, another wave of displacement impacted what remained of the neighborhood. In the 1990s, the area’s affordable housing attracted white residents priced out of other districts. The city began channeling previously withheld resources into Albina, cracking down on predatory lending and housing abandonment. These changes primarily benefited middle-class white newcomers, leading to a surge in housing prices that soon placed them out of reach for many long-term residents. By 2000, less than a third of Black Portlanders lived in Albina, and for the first time since the 1960s, the area no longer held a Black majority. "A lot of folks are out in The Numbers now," Sylvester told me, referring to the far eastern reaches of Portland. He reminisced about cruising in his 1974 Dodge Charger, noting, "I could wave at 50 people, stop and talk to 30. Now, I can drive from my house in Kenton, all through Albina, and never wave once."

A mile south of Mississippi Avenue, the school district headquarters occupies a sprawling 10.5-acre campus. This site, one of the "urban renewal" projects that displaced residents in the 1960s, is a drab industrial building resembling a parking garage. However, on the day of my visit, the building’s uninspired exterior contrasted sharply with the vibrant scene unfolding inside. Children raced around, enjoying watermelon slices and salami from a generously laden snack table. Adults exchanged warm greetings and handshakes. A DJ, positioned behind a setup of turntables and mixers, captivated the attention of many 11-year-olds, filling the room with buoyant music.

Norman Sylvester opened the event, initiating a lineup of musicians and speakers that spanned genres and generations, from blues to hip-hop, high school students to elders. He walked onstage carrying his guitar not as an object, but as an extension of his being. Though Sylvester has explored various musical genres throughout his career, his roots remain firmly planted in the blues. When asked about his enduring connection to the genre, he mused, "I can only imagine a man like Muddy Waters or Son House, plowing a field, driving a tractor all day, and still being able to play a guitar and sing at that quality. Where did that come from?" Before I could offer a guess, he provided his own answer: "From the dedication they had to doing something better. Those journeys just mean something to me, so I want to keep that going." Listening to him play that afternoon, his notes bending into riffs that were both achingly sweet and profoundly resonant, I reflected on his words and their implication: a song is not merely an artifact to be archived, but a repository of lived experience in itself, preserving a record of life accessible for future generations.

The event concluded with producers Tony Ozier and Jumbo, two of the five artists who remixed archival recordings to create contemporary, beat-driven tracks for AMT’s 2025 album, Soul Assembly. "We figured we could be the bridge, not just to take the old to the now, but to pass the torch so the youngsters can take it from us and walk forward," Jumbo told the assembled crowd. Soul Assembly derives its name from a 1968 musical theater production created by the Black Student Union at Jefferson High in response to the escalating racial tensions following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Performed throughout the city, the show illuminated African American history while celebrating the vibrant culture and creativity of Portland’s Black community.

When Ozier discovered this story in the archive, he was struck by its significance. "Portland doesn’t have a great reputation for Black culture," he confessed, recalling his arrival in the city 19 years prior as a young funk musician, not expecting to find such a deeply rooted Black music scene. He soon met Janice Scroggins, who introduced him to a wealth of local funk musicians. "I thought I was funkin’," Ozier said with a laugh, "She said, ‘You are funkin’ – but Portland ain’t new to funk.’" Ozier now teaches youth music classes for the Bodecker Foundation and hopes that AMT projects like the Soul Assembly album will help connect young people to the music and stories of Albina’s past. "This is Black history in Portland – where else do you hear that?" he asked. Culture, Ozier emphasized, is profoundly shaped by the music youth engage with, noting, "Listening to ‘say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud,’ when you’re 15 is different than listening to ‘you used to call me on your cellphone.’ Those words, they get stuck in your head whether you want them to or not."

That day, Ozier and Jumbo performed two tracks. The first, "Searchin’ for Love," recorded in the 1970s by Shades of Brown and released in 2024 on AMT’s label, is an irresistibly catchy song with a laid-back groove and piercing vocals, yet it is imbued with an underlying anguish. Described in the liner notes as a "cry for decency," the track reflects the Albina community’s dismay at the city’s disregard for their neighborhoods. Jumbo then played a remixed version, layering samples from his own coming-of-age years over the original track. A thumping beat and electronic torque lend new potency to the original vocals, which reverberate relentlessly throughout. The song seemed to collapse time, captivating the audience as they nodded their heads in mesmerized unison. Its effect was perhaps amplified by the setting – inside a building constructed on the site of razed homes of a once-thriving neighborhood, now filled with members of that displaced community returning to celebrate their enduring culture. The space mirrored Jumbo’s sonic landscape, where histories layered upon one another, and echoes of the past mingled with the aspirations of the future. Like the song, the event served as both a tribute to the enduring impact of history and a testament to the human capacity to create something new from what has been given.

Before the summer concluded, I attended another AMT event: the revival of Albina’s historic TimeSound concert series, now under AMT’s stewardship after a three-decade hiatus. This performance was part of the grand reopening celebration for the expanded Albina Library, situated on Russell Street, just a block east of the intersection where Norman Sylvester had stood as a young boy in search of a haircut in the fall of 1957. Before the concert, I walked to the crossing. The afternoon sun pooled on the asphalt, broken by the shade of street trees. Cars passed, and a woman carried a toddler down the sidewalk. I imagined Sylvester standing there all those years ago. If that 12-year-old boy returned today, I wondered, would he recognize anything? Apartments occupied two corners, and a commercial complex on the third housed the Urban League of Portland, a civil rights nonprofit. On the fourth corner, where the brick building with the onion-shaped cupola once stood, a chain-link fence enclosed a rectangle of bare land. This space had remained vacant since its demolition in the 1970s. Now, half a century later, that is finally changing. Last February, a Black-led nonprofit, the Williams and Russell CDC, broke ground on a residential and commercial development designed to prioritize access for individuals with generational ties to the neighborhood. The city of Portland, which in June agreed to a $8.5 million settlement for 26 descendants of displaced Black families, is among the project’s partners. Funding for the project comes in part from the 1803 Fund, an organization that invests in Black Portland and has supported several restorative development efforts in Albina. The 1803 Fund also supports AMT’s work, as Juma Sei, the organization’s community partnership manager, explained, "You can have a bunch of buildings, but it doesn’t matter if there isn’t a culture to put people into those buildings."

Sei first encountered AMT shortly after his return to Portland in 2024. Having grown up in the area but with parents who immigrated from Sierra Leone, he lacked generational connections to Portland’s Black community. Seeking a deeper understanding of local Black history, he began researching archives and discovered AMT. He was astonished. Sei had lived in Atlanta, Washington D.C., and Detroit, cities renowned for their Black culture. "Portland isn’t on that list," he remarked, "But here was this living, breathing thing – the largest archive of its kind in the U.S. – right here in Portland. To me, it was a treasure trove." While Albina is no longer the demographic center of Black life in Portland, with most Black Portlanders now residing farther east or outside the city, the recent library celebration events, featuring puppet theater and 3D printing demonstrations, saw few Black attendees. The TimeSound concert, however, presented a starkly different scene.

In a large meeting room, a dreamy mural backdropped a stage, and glass doors opened to a sun-drenched courtyard where attendees enjoyed complimentary horchata oat-milk popsicles. The space, filled with natural light, was nearly at capacity with predominantly Black families, though people of all backgrounds were present, creating an intergenerational crowd spanning seniors, forty-somethings, and infants. Calvin Walker took the microphone first, exclaiming, "Is this not a miracle? To have this beautiful facility, the second-largest library in Portland, right here?" The room erupted in applause. "There was a time when nobody wanted to live in Albina," he continued. "After Vanport, this is where we landed, and we made it vibrant. Now, it’s going to come back, and it’s going to come back with all of us."

The concert was directed by Arietta Ward, who, in the TimeSound tradition, led an intergenerational ensemble performing works by Albina’s Black composers. When Berry asked her to direct, Ward expressed trepidation, admitting, "It’s hard not to get imposter syndrome. These musicians are my heroes, my teachers. They’ll always be legendary to me." Yet, on stage that afternoon, her admiration for Albina’s musicians, past and present, resonated powerfully. To showcase the community’s female artists, she had selected a program primarily composed by women, beginning with a piece by her mother. The crowd fell silent, with some, like myself, hearing the composition for the first time, while others likely recalled listening to it many times before, perhaps even performing it themselves. For them, the song likely unlocked a treasure trove of memories, evoking cherished people and places from years gone by. The courtyard doors stood open, and I wondered if a young boy standing on the corner of Williams and Russell might catch a riff drifting on the wind.

Near the concert’s conclusion, Ward invited Berry onstage to sing. He approached the microphone, shaking his head with a mixture of disbelief and delight. "I was just having a flashback," he said, recalling an evening some 35 years prior at another Portland library concert. Ward and her sister Nafisaria, then children, were present. "Arietta was right here," he stated, gesturing to his ribs to indicate her childhood height. Looking up, his eyes welled with tears, but a smile graced his face. "It’s just so good to see that we are still whole when there’s been so much to break us apart," he said. He paused, then turned to the band, signaled them to begin, and allowed the music to speak for itself.