Oakland is a city of just over 4 hundred thousand people located in California’s bay area across the water from its bigger and far more famous sister city, San Francisco. Despite its relatively smaller size and relationship as the “other” city to San Francisco. Oakland has produced some brilliant music by the likes of Pharoah Sanders, The Pointer Sisters, Sheila E. MC Hammer, 2pac, Souls of Mischief, Del tha funky homosapien, Raphael Sadiq and Seasick Steve.
When it comes to music there are a few genres that Oakland has been known particularly for over the years and they are Jazz, Blues, Soul and Hip Hop. In the early 1900s a wave of jazz musicians arrived with the migration of labourers that moved to the bay area from places like New Orleans to work on the railroads that were being built at the time. By the 1960s there was already a highly developed jazz scene in the city. Clubs like Creole Café, Musicians Union Club, Sweet's Ballroom and the Burma Lounge had live jazz music playing every night of the week and it was in this fertile jazz scene that one of the genres all time greats made his first moves in Jazz Music.
In 1959 a young man called Ferrel Lee Sanders moved from his hometown of little rock in Arkansas to live with relatives and study art and music at Oakland City college. Ferrel would go on to become the jazz musician known as Pharaoh Sanders, a legendary performer that would play in John Coltrane’s live band, collaborate with Leon Thomas and Alice Coltrane and who was highly influential in the development of free jazz and spiritual Jazz.
A decade after Pharoah Sanders moved to Oakland, a girl group consisting of sisters June, Bonnie and Anita Pointer started performing in the nightclubs of Oakland with their own blend of Jazz, blues and soul music. The name of their group was The Pointer Sisters and they would go on to achieve huge success, winning three grammys and scoring many world-wide chart topping hits over there long career which still continues to this day.
Growing up in the Excovedo’s the jazz club that her father opened in the lakeshore district of Oakland Sheila Cecilia Escovedo or Sheila E. as she went on to be known by was a percussionist, related to the legendary latino jazz conga player Tito Puente, she started out performing percussion with The George Duke Band but after leaving the group, Sheila gained relative success with the release of her debut single ‘The Glamourous Life, a piece of soulful pop music that pays hommage to her background as a percussionist and her upbringing in Oakland’s jazz scene.
In the late 1980s a young man hip hop artist going by the name of 2pac started making waves out of oakland with his own brand of rap music that addressed the contemporary social issues being faced by african americans in the inner cities. Though at times surrounded by controversy, 2pac would go on to become one of the highest selling music artists of the 1990s, one of the most influential rappers of all time and a symbol of activism against inequality.
In the 1990s Oakland’s music scene went through a particularly fertile period for the newly emerging sound of west coast 90s hip hop. In 1991 the formation of a new crew called Hierglyphics which assembled some of the cities best hip hop producers and MCs signalled a new dawn for oakland hip hop. The founder of Hieroglyphics was a rapper that went by the name of Del The Funky Homosapien. Founding Hieroglyphics was a move that solidified the Oakland hip hop scene and put oakland on the map for hip hop in the 1990s.