Fantastic Negrito & Friends
Oakland Museum of California
1000 Oak St, Oakland
May 10, 2024
Seeing Fantastic Negrito & Friends at the latest Friday night event at Oakland Museum of California felt like hosting an international rock star in your own backyard, and on 510 Day nonetheless. His soul is so deep you can’t see where it ends.
Not only did their set begin on time at 6:35, but that timing was perfect. The sun was still up but lazily setting by the time the music wrapped.
I have been the artist onstage outside in front of a wide open space, so I know it’s not easy to focus while people are talking, eating, and loudly corralling kids. Fantastic Negrito knew how to capture his audiencewith his foot-stomping blues and roots music. “I love most of y’all,” he said at one point. “Ya ain’t all with me, but we’re gonna get there by the end of the night.”
At the beginning, it was hard to tell who was a die-hard fan with all the children running around, parents in line for the bar or nesting on blankets scattered along the lawn. Throughout the concert, security guards did the best they could to keep people from sidling up to the front of the stage, but by the end, dozens of adults and children alike were up close, flanking the sides, hootin’ and a hollerin’.
Negrito, whose vocal style ranges to range from Jimi Hendrix to Al Green, shared his story of busking at the West Oakland Bart station when a stranger suggested he send in a video for the first NPR Tiny Desk Contest. He refused at first, but after being pushed, he followed through and ended up becoming the first ever grand-prize winner of the now-popular contest. Judging from his online biographies, he’s been through hell and back: foster care, drug dealing, a near fatal car crash. It’s almost as though he’s a living incarnation of Robert Johnson, the Delta Bluesman who according to tradition sold his soul to the devil in exchange for mastery of the guitar.
Oh, that bank is a serial killer
Trying to build more prisons for your children
That doctor’s a drug dealer
Gotta make a profit, gotta make a killing
It’s safe to say the audience couldn’t get enough of the clever lyrics, the funky rhythm guitar, and the themes of oppression and liberation woven throughout. Negrito balanced the pain and the joy perfectly, even when he wasn’t pleased with the sound mixing. About the lack of signal coming from the keyboard, he poked at the sound engineer: “Can you hear him? I can’t. What, you don’t like keyboards?”
Despite his audio expectations falling short, he carried on without missing a beat and nothing was lost from the performance. It only made him funnier. He heavily engaged with the audience callback-style, showing his prowess. It was sweet to see him kneel down and hold the mic out to the jumping children so they could take turns screaming into it.
“You guys are the best,” he said at the end of the show, and it felt like we’d earned a gold star as an audience he was initially skeptical of. He finished with the funkiest, bluesiest version of “This Little Light of Mine,” a familiar ditty once tied to Fannie Lou Hamer and the Civil Rights Movement. I rushed the merch table to show appreciation and snag my little piece of West Oakland legend, Fantastic Negrito, as seen above.
Fantastic Negrito’s music and more can be found here, and OMCA hosts free events weekly each Friday.
