It’s been a year since Oakland Drops Beats emerged onto Oakland’s growing music scene, offering a diverse musical experience for artists, producers, and music lovers alike. But the free quarterly event is more than just music; it’s a party in the streets where performers and attendees are both a part of the process, says creator Angelica Tavella.
“It’s a music crawl, and not a music festival,” says Tavella, a musician who spends her time between Oakland and Los Angeles. “The idea is to go from place to place and see a bunch of different music.”
Oakland’s musicians are far from short on creativity, passion, or energy. What they do lack, though, is exposure — either by choice or by chance — and the crawl gives hip-hop heads, rockers, electronic beatmakers and indie singers a chance to network with one another. “There’s a lot of really great passionate music circles that are in Oakland,” Tavella says, “but a lot of the time they can be isolated and they do their own thing.” Tavella has witnessed relationships emerge and co-produced shows borne out of Oakland Drops Beats, and in wandering the stretch between 12th Street and 19th Street BART, participants are part of the cross-pollination as well.
Oakland Drops beats is all-ages, and this year kicks off with a youth showcase featuring Bump Records, Youth Radio, and Today’s Future Sound. (Tavella points to Youth Radio and Today’s Future Sound as important partners: “When we were getting [Oakland Drops Beats] started it was also important to have an outlet for younger people to get started playing.”)
In addition to promoting Oakland’s younger musicians, the crawl has recently added workshops, lectures, and demos on various musical topics. Tavella says there’s no routine place where music-related issues and general conversations around music [are] brought up, and that she hopes for “discussion on all different types of topics that are affecting musicians.”