When the band La Misa Negra and singer Sam Johnson started their music careers, they had no idea that they would be part of a new influx of local Bay Area music. Oakland and the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco are historically known for having a strong music presence in the last half of the 20th century, according to Marco Polo Santiago, the founder of La Misa Negra. Santiago said that the scene now is “kinda small, like, even though there have been significant bands from the bay, it’s not LA and it’s not New York.”
La Misa Negra, Spanish for “The Black Mass,” is a seven-piece Afro-Latin/cumbia band based out of Oakland, California which, in the past six years, has become prominent in the Bay Area Latinx music scene. La Misma Negra has shared stages with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stevie Wonder and Bill Clinton and has gained a reputation as one of the best bands to see live in the Bay Area. Founded by Santiago, songwriter, guitarist and accordion player, the band also consists of Diana Trujillo (lead vocals), Justin Chin (tenor and baritone sax), Morgan Nilsen (tenor sax and clarinet), Craig Bravo (drums and percussion), Elena de Troya (percussion) and Paul Martin Sounder (upright bass and percussion). According to Santiago, the band specializes in high tempo Afro-Latin and cumbia music blended with “metal, punk rock and pretty much all of that kind of music.” Santiago started the band before there was a significant Latin-Alternative scene in the Bay Area.
La Misa Negra became a pioneer in the Bay Area with their songs “Sanchocho” and “Acosadora,” which combine classical Latin American accordion with Santiago’s electric guitar skills.
The Bay Area scene is welcoming to new bands. “It’s hard to start a band,” Santiago says, “but when I started this one, I felt that all the doors in the Bay Area opened. Places like the New Parish and the Independent and Slim’s were really welcoming to our style of music.”
La Misa Negra is also known for being one of the best performing groups in the Bay Area. Santiago says, “On stage, I knew we were going to be a rock band. I feel like we’re a punk band that masquerades as cumbia.” Santiago considers how he would want an artist to perform if he was in the audience. He wants to make people feel like jumping around. The high-tempo nature of La Misa Negra’s sound is not the only type of music gracing the Bay Area.
Singer Sam Johnson has gained a large fan base in San Francisco, with fans who have “followed him to every show since [he] started,” according to Johnson.
Johnson started as a street performer on Fisherman’s Wharf. Johnson recalls his love for laid-back, reggae-pop, a style that gained him enough traction to become the opener for Andy Grammer’s West Coast Tour in 2016. “The first day I performed [at Fisherman’s Wharf], I made 60 dollars and I couldn’t believe it because I was working a restaurant job and making 60 dollars a night. I thought, one day I’ll make one hundred dollars.”
Eight years later, Johnson is signed to Text Me Records, an independent label in San Francisco’s Mission District. He is scheduled to join the San Francisco band Train’s upcoming international tour in 2020.
Johnson plays guitar with a spin on classic reggae, “opening up the chords, so it kind of [blends] into some kind of singer-songwriter-meets-reggae type-vibe.” Johnson’s low-key California sound has won him a job as the official artist of the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, but he still loves playing at “bars and small venues like Slim’s.”
While both La Misa Negra and Sam Johnson differ from the traditional “San Francisco Sound” made popular by bands like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, both artists feel that their new sounds coming out of the Bay Area create a more welcoming and inclusive atmosphere for new bands, something that they are both proud of.
