.A Leaner Art & Soul

Held two weeks earlier, this year's festival crams three days of art and soul into two.

The crowd at most festivals is delineated by whoever books the main
stage: KFOG will get you a lot of people in their forties and fifties;
Alice Radio will draw fourteen-year-olds and their mothers. Such
patterns are the bane of any event that tries to be multicultural or
intergenerational — particularly an event like Art &
Soul
, the annual bash that brings together a whole panoply of
subcultures in Oakland. Now in its ninth year, the festival manages to
attract a pretty mixed crowd from throughout the Bay Area, owing partly
to its downtown location but mostly to its imaginative performance
lineups. In previous years it’s had gospel, blues, rock, and “culture”
stages, all of which feature A-list acts alongside up-and-comers (local
artists take precedence). By providing a little something for everyone,
Art & Soul consistently drew huge audiences. It’s managed to stay
relatively recession-proof in a year of civic bloodletting and festival
closures.

That’s no small feat. Adaptability seems to be the real secret
behind Art & Soul, which started as the brainchild of Oakland’s
cultural arts and marketing manager Samee Lynn Roberts and several
other boosters. The impetus, at first, was to replace Festival at the
Lake, a state-sponsored event that terminated in 1997. The producers
wanted a downtown locale so their event would have “a lot of room to
grow and spread out,” said Roberts. They chose Frank Ogawa Plaza
(14th St. at Broadway), and spent the next two and a half years
drumming up the seed money. They decided to charge $10 a head so the
festival would cover its own costs. The inaugural fest in 2000 was an
instant success.

This year Art & Soul changed with the times — namely, by
moving from its traditional Labor Day weekend date to an earlier
weekend in August (it runs this Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 15 and 16).
Roberts and company planned the date partly because of a Bay Bridge
closure scheduled for Labor Day weekend, partly to trim the budget (a
$100,000 city subsidy fell by the wayside, and two days are a lot
cheaper than three), and partly because Labor Day coincided with
Burning Man, which had prevented Art & Soul from partnering with
industrial artists from NIMBY and the Crucible. Getting people to
acclimate to the new date has been challenging, said Roberts. Yet she
and fellow producers experimented with the format, and figured out how
to squeeze three days of art and soul into two: This year’s festival
will feature a Latin stage, an Oakland R&B reunion stage, and a
hip-hop infused world dance stage, along with a special Yoshi’s jazz
stage. “It’s really a sustainability and a longevity issue,” said
Roberts, who thinks the new redesign will help Art & Soul survive
for years to come. For now, she’s cautiously optimistic. This year’s
headliners include Shawn Colvin, Will Downing, Frankie Lee, SEPIA,
Ramana, Vieira, and the Hawkins family, among others. Noon-6 p.m.,
$5-$10. ArtandSoulOakland.com

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