Long since Saunders King’s electric elevation smacked blues with reverberating amplification, Oakland has continued to be ground zero for a music, dance, and art that is particularly northern Californian while also being globally relevant.
Oakland is a giant. As undeniable as Tupac, as underground as Marvin Holmes, as glamorous as Sheila E., as powerful as Larry Graham and the Pointer Sisters, this is a vast neighborhood of rhythm; a place where everything exists at once under your nose and all too often unchecked.
Celebrating the genius that the urban experience generates, The Malcolm X Jazz Festival is in its 14th year. Organized by the Eastside Arts Alliance, the festival celebrates the legacy of Malcolm X with multiple stages of live music, graffiti arts, live painting, vendors, food and more.
It’s an ongoing conversation about Oakland’s social and musical histories that elevates the city’s often overlooked role in this planet’s jazz, funk, and hip hop scenes. Unlike festivals dreamed up over corporate marketing meetings, The Malcolm X Jazz Festival continues to swell from its community’s heart, just as it did 14 years ago when it sprang from a nascent Eastside Arts Alliance.
Consummate artist and Oakland native Traci Bartlow knows this. She is a 12-year core member of the East Side Arts Alliance who, aside from developing curriculum and teaching at Eastside’s youth program, developed one of the festival’s lasting community traditions: the dance cipher.