Revisiting a neighborhood through its music: The Albina Soul Walk

By Claire Levine

Megan Hattie Stahl is a filmmaker, and she’s always looking for a good story to tell. 

In a grad school class, she had learned about Echoes, a geolocation app. It integrates your phone’s GPS system with relevant information. And she planned to use it to highlight some of Portland’s musical history.

She succeeded in doing so, in partnership with The Abina Music Trust. But what began as a story about music became much more: a focus on social, political and economic forces that wiped out a community and its music.

Using the Echoe app, you can take the Abina Soul Walk through Northeast Portland, between Vancouver and Martin Luther King., Blvd. to the east and west, and Knott Street and Tillamook Ave. to the north and south.

As you walk, you’ll listen to Oregon Music Hall of Fame members Calvin Walker and Norman Sylvester talk about their memories of the 1950s, when the Albina neighborhood “was a city within a city.” 

And it was home to great bands, like The Gangsters, and Ruby and the Wonders. Megan, who learned about them through Bobby Smith at the Albina Music Trust, told the Oregonian, “The bands are just mind-blowingly good.” You’ll hear some of these great musicians on the app as you explore the neighborhood. And on the tour you’ll see the locations of places like the Cotton Club, the Texas Playhouse and the Bill Webb Elks Club, where these extraordinary musicians played.

Megan said, “I thought I was going to tell a simpler story about the music scene and these different locations. But it came clear, especially after talking to Calvin Walker and others, that it needed to be put in the context of urban renewal, gentrification and the outside world.”

Bobby Smith of the Albina Music Trust has a long-standing interest in Northwest musicians. Over time, “I started wondering why there weren’t records of soul, jazz and funk music for Portland.”  

When he helped launch Xray.fm, a local online radio station, he began interviewing Portland musicians. “We opened up a lot of opportunity for them to share music. We digitized their music, collected photos and did oral histories.”

This work has culminated in The Albina Music Trust, a repository of music, photos and stories that might otherwise be lost.

Today, the Portland community is belatedly focusing on the vitality and culture it has missed out on with the loss of the Albina community. To learn more about its history and how residents are working together, visit the Albina Vision Trust.

And enjoy your walk through the neighborhood while listening to great music and stories well worth hearing.