It’s hard to think of a better First Friday event during Black History Month than AeroSoul 2, which began a monthlong residency at the Joyce Gordon Gallery on Feb. 4.

Besides being a dynamic, inspirational and historical example of urban artistic expression at its most cultural, the show rather neatly and seemingly effortlessly incorporated many larger themes with its very existence: it addressed, for instance, the oft-heard complaint about First Friday - that the typically Uptown-centric monthly event excludes much of the diversity of Oakland’s burgeoning art scene, especially East of Broadway.

AeroSoul 2 reclaimed graffiti art - which has become an international phenomenon since first appearing in New York and Philadelphia in the late ‘60s - as a black art form and a root of hip-hop culture. It tied together the various strands of graffiti culture, from lettering to figurative drawing, while linking generations of artists through oral and visual tradition. And it connected graffiti to social and cultural protest, an inherent relationship evident in the dichotomy between artist and environment.

In particular, the exhibit brought together the efforts of five generations of graffiti artists from the Bay Area, as well as Los Angeles, New York and Chicago (along with comrades-in-paint Emory Douglas, Brett Cook-Dizney and Overton Lloyd). Seminal works from graf OG's like Stan 153 and Chain 3 were displayed, along with canvases from Southern Californian Cre8, local mainstays Refa One and Kufu, and done-on-the-spot paintings by European graf/visual artist Mode2. The historical tie-in suggested by the show’s subtitle - urban hieroglyphics - was made evident by a large winged aten, or Kemetic sun disk, which stretched across the gallery’s overhanging wall.

Friday night’s scene on 14th Street was one of energetic engagement in black art, as throngs of people - including Mayor Jean Quan and City Councilwoman Desley Brooks - checked out not only the Aero Soul art show, but glass artist Aziz’ works at Gordon’s other gallery just down the block. Meanwhile, a couple of doors up, at the Oakland Events Center, musician-cum-cultural historian D’Wayne Wiggins had turned the space into somewhat of a cultural shrine with African and African-American artifacts. Red light bathed the venue as PopLyfe, a youth band featuring Wiggins’ sons, laid down a jam session.

The next evening, things got even deeper. A panel discussion on graffiti featuring the exhibiting artists turned into a landmark discussion on the evolution of the art form, which went on for several hours. As the conversation evolved, topics such as the therapeutic value of graffiti, its relationship to hip-hop culture, commerce and advertising, its visual aesthetic, its transition from underground to overground and even its connection to Kemetic science and sacred geometry were all covered in depth and detail.

The old-school NYC writers explained that graffiti as a term didn’t even exist when they started writing.

“We were around before hip-hop,” said Chain 3, who began writing in 1971.

In that early era, he said, graffiti not only wasn’t the preferred term used by its proponents, but wasn’t even in the dictionary - the closest was the Italian word graffito. As the art form evolved and spread to other places, black artists began to be less and less represented, as whites, Latinos and Asians picked up spray cans, while commodification and the elitism of the commercial art scene elevated some artists who were more popular than innovative or authentic to fame and fortune and while many of the originators of the form toiled in relative obscurity.

“We are up against a continued effort to erase culture,” said audience member and radio personality Davey-D, using the word "rap" as an example of a term created by the media and not by the original hip-hop emcees themselves.

Refa 1 pointed out that co-option has been going on for quite some time

"When we came off that slave ship, they took our names,” he reminded the crowd.

The discussion went on to muse over what the preferred terminology to describe the art form should be. Some artists preferred “graf” (which also incorporates graphic design), while others preferred the more evocative, descriptive “style writing,” which emphasizes the purposeful flow and competition-oriented aspects of graffiti. Refa reiterated the name of the show - AeroSoul - because “creativity is an expression of our spirit.”

Above all, the discussion emphasized the universal language of graffiti, as well as its continued evolution and development, from time immemorial up to the present. Recognizing the powerful energy in the room, Phade, the famed NYC “Shirt King,” remarked, “We’re all architects. We can build a city.”

About Eric K Arnold

Eric K. Arnold has been writing about urban music culture since the mid-1990s, when he was the Managing Editor of now-defunct 4080 Magazine. Since then, he’s been a columnist for such publications as The Source, XXL, Murder Dog, Africana.com, and the East Bay Express; his work has also appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Vibe, Wax Poetics, SF Weekly, XLR8R, the Village Voice and Jamrock, as well as the academic anthologies Total Chaos and The Vinyl Ain’t Final. Eric began his journalistic career while DJing on college radio station KZSC, and remembers well the early days of hip-hop radio, before consolidation, and commercialization set in. He currently lives in Oakland, California.