Nearly twenty years before she sang “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” at the 2025 Super Bowl or performed on Broadway, R&B supernova Ledisi was just another Bay Area artist, hustling to make ends meet.

With her hair tucked under a baseball cap, she sang jazz at the local fish markets and wine bars, and worked odd jobs as a telemarketer and record store attendant. She put her operatic training from UC Berkeley to use at Max’s Opera Cafe in San Francisco, where she sang arias for tips. She also performed in the long-running revue Beach Blanket Babylon in North Beach.

“I had a Tina Turner wig that went six feet tall on top of my head,” Ledisi says. “I was tapping a trash can.”

On Oct. 6, Ledisi will return to San Francisco to sing yet again, this time in tribute to Dinah Washington , kno

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