2025 Women Of Live: Rebekah Foster

Rebekah Foster
Owner & CEO | Ujima Sound Productions Ltd.

MONEY QUOTE | “When they say man with a van, I was a woman with a van back in
the early days.”

Rebekah Foster is a trailblazing audio engineer, production manager, tour manager and more who’s worked with some of the greatest artists of our time. This includes jazz greats Sarah Vaughn, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie and Marcus Miller; hip-hop legends Queen Latifah, Boogie Down Productions and Outkast; as well as Whitney Houston, Prince and Luther Vandross among many others.

She’s worked at prestigious venues like Carnegie Hall, The Apollo Theater and The Kennedy Center and top festivals like Glastonbury, Montreux and Lollapalooza. Most recently, Foster worked with Stevie Wonder on his phenomenal FireAid set at the Intuit Dome. Her career by any standard is amazing, more so considering her background and the challenges she faced.

“I’m a Black woman and was one of like three female engineers at the time. Period,” says Foster, who began working in the industry in the 1980s. “It was tough, there was built-in racism, but we learned as we went and made it happen and it was great.”

Her mettle was forged in New York’s Bronx, where she was inspired by her father the Rev. Wendell Foster, a pastor, theater person and city councilman.

Among her many milestones was going from jazz to hip-hop. “While doing a Sonny Rollins gig, KRS-1 came up to the soundboard and was like, ‘I want my bass to sound like that live.’” She would record BDP and do his live sound. In 1991, she worked for Queen Latifah who toured with Public Enemy. Foster also cites “The Legends Tour” with Joe Sample, Eric Clapton, Steve Gadd and David Sanborn.

Other tentpoles include starting Ujima Sound Productions and paying her experiences forward. “Every year I’ve hired interns. Kids that might not ever get off the block. My record is pretty good with many working for A-list artists, which is wonderful.” Foster also continues helping her father’s church by taking care of operations and the food pantry.

Foster is on the advisory board of Roadies of Color, which works to promote a more diverse, equitable and inclusive live business. “If it wasn’t for Roadies of Color,” she says, “the little bit of inroads we made would not be happening.”