Halimah the Dreamah has been making music all her life. The story goes that when she was born, instead of the usual scream on entrance into the world, she sang a high C, shattering all the windows in the delivery room.
Halimah
has been a singer since early childhood, inheriting some of her musical
interest and talent from her father who was a professional bass and
tuba player with big band leader Kay
Kyser and His Kollege of Musical Knowledge. He brought home stacks
of 78 recordings and she devoured them daily.
Her first public performance was in church at age 6. She has been an active performer ever since, singing in school choirs, trios, with the high school dance band, and she had the lead in her high school operetta, Call Me Madam. Her favorite song from the musical was “The Hostest with the Mostest.” She tries to live up to that reputation.
While
in college at San Jose State University, as “Sherry
Snow,” she sang in local clubs as a folksinger, traveling
the Bay Area circuit with other budding artists (before any of them
formed their folk/rock groups) including Jerry
Garcia, Paul Kantner (Jefferson
Airplane), Pig Pen (Grateful
Dead) and numerous folk/rock legends. Like many of her friends and
fellow musicians, she dropped out of college to pursue her musical career.
In 1965 she and her new partner, singer/songwriter, Jeff Blackburn, signed a contract with Frank Werber, manager of the Kingston Trio and Trident Productions. As “Blackburn & Snow,” they performed for three years in the Bay Area at various venues including “the hungry i,” the Fillmore Auditorium, the Avalon and at Be-ins and happenings in the park - the usual spots for emerging bands. The duo recorded more than an album’s worth of songs but only two singles were released before Blackburn & Snow left Trident Productions. Ace Records, from the UK, released a CD of their original music in 1999 called Something Good for Your Head (available from www.amazon.com). There is also mention of them in “Eight Miles High” (2003), a book about the 1960s folk/rock era written by Richie Unterberger and published by Backbeat Books.
A
few months after Blackburn & Snow disbanded in 1967, Dan
Hicks, founder and lead singer of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, advertised
for two women singers to join his band. Halimah and her friend, Christina,
auditioned. They began singing with Dan and soon recorded the first
Hot Licks album, Original Recordings, in 1968.
In 1969, Halimah left Dan Hicks, traveled for some months, stayed in Indonesia where she lived with members of her spiritual practice, Subud. She finally settled in London. Traveling extensively throughout Europe, she listened to lots of music and gathered the seeds of what would later become a lifelong devotion to the world’s cultures and their music.
Living in Scotland from 1976 to 1983, she was surrounded by the natural beauty and simple life of the rustic Highlands which influenced her love of the stillness of the moors and the richness of the bagpipe and Celtic music.
Eventually
Halimah and her family moved to Arcata, California and when she returned
to college at Humboldt
State University in 1987, she began volunteering at the local NPR
affiliate, KHSU-FM.
Halimah has extensive experience in radio as a producer and engineer (Rap on Race, Sharetime), and programmer/host for the past fourteen years of the weekly World Music program "Ethnic Excursions" as Halimah the Dreamah.
Halimah continues to sing and is co-founder of the Arcata Interfaith Gospel Choir, sings with a Balkan Choir and any other group who will have her.
Her
motto, borrowed from the I Ching, is Perseverance Furthers.…….
