"Red, White & Blue," for example, written after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, expresses her feeling that Americans should not automatically support a militaristic response to terrorist threats. The CD features a mix of love songs and more politically oriented material. The CD received a three-star review in Rolling Stone and a positive review in Billboard. To distribute the CD, titled Even Closer, she, her brother Namane, and friend Theo Rodrigues formed their own independent label, Skyblaze.Įven Closer was another regional hit, with San Francisco hip-hop station KMEL giving airtime to the CD's single, "Closer." It also brought Goapele to national attention. In 2002 she reworked her debut record, adding five new songs. At the same time, she was building a devoted audience through her popular live performances in the Bay Area. Industry insiders liked what they heard, and the EP sold 5,000 copies, largely due to word-of-mouth recommendations. Returning to the Bay area after her stint at Berklee, Goapele concentrated on writing and recording songs, and with the help of her family she put out a promotional 9-song disc, Closer, in 2001. Determined to make music her life's work, she enrolled at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, after finishing high school. She also sang with the ensemble Vocal Motion. During high school she often sang at community events, and at age 14 she joined the Oakland Youth Chorus. From her earliest years, Goapele loved to sing, using her family as a practice audience.
Music was equally important in the Mohlabane household, where recordings by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Billy Holiday, Aretha Franklin, and Bob Marley shared space with those of African artists such as Miriam Makeba, Zulu Spear, and Hugh Masekela, whose music was banned in South Africa at that time. She later served with her mother on the national board of directors of Be Present, Inc., and also participated in peer education efforts of the community group Empowered Youth Educating Society (EYES). "These issues were not only important, but the focus of our everyday lives." At age ten, Goapele organized a Bay Area Black Women's Health Project peer-led support group, its first for preteens. "What two cultures faced historically forced my brother and I to be sensitive toward various cultures and social issues," the singer explained on the William Morris Web site. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, Goapele and her brother inherited their parents' commitment to political activism. Her name, which she uses without her surname, means "to move forward" in Sitswana, one of the languages spoken in her father's homeland. Goapele (pronounced "gwa-pa-lay") was born around 1978 in Oakland, California, the daughter of a South African father and a Jewish mother from New York City who had met and married in Kenya. Promotional materials on the Web site of her agent, William Morris Agency, claimed that "her music combines elements of soul, hip-hop, jazz and rhythm and blues into a smooth and seductive blend uniquely her own." Hailed as an original and mesmerizing voice in the new soul genre, singer Goapele has gained national attention since the release of her debut album, Even Closer, in 2001.
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