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San Francisco Chronicle​

These young Oakland musicians got invited to Trump's Kennedy Center. Here's what they decided

When President Donald Trump assumed control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts this year, many left-leaning artists on its lineup faced a defining choice: Stay on the bill and risk forever linking their name to the president, or cancel and forfeit the chance to voice dissent from Trump's own stage. Ahead of a Friday, July 18 concert at the flagship Washington D.C. venue, Oakland Rising faced that exact dilemma. Of the seven-person music collective, three members plan to perform, while four have opted to refrain. Each had to articulate their own principles while giving grace to others who made the opposite decision. What's more, these musicians are taking this consequential stand at very young ages — one of its members can't even drive yet. B DeVeaux, 24, called the Kennedy Center invitation 'a moment where you decide what side of history you're going to be on.' That kind of predicament would have seemed unimaginable just a year ago for a youth group that only first performed at last year's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass music festival in San Francisco. Oakland Rising was formed under the aegis of two-year-old nonprofit Follow the Music in collaboration with Hardly Strictly. The goal, said Follow the Music Executive Director Phil Green, was to 'change the narrative' around Oakland by spotlighting the prodigious talent of its young musicians, who could cycle in and out of the group as a career stepping stone. Current members' styles range from folk to jazz, bluegrass to R&B. After national booking agents Jaime Kelsall and Bruce Solar of Paladin Artists saw clips of the collective's debut in Golden Gate Park, the pair began helping Oakland Rising secure other gigs, including at the Kennedy Center, where Paladin had a relationship that long predated the Trump administration. 'We're not Trumpers. We're the furthest thing from,' Solar told the Chronicle. But after Trump's takeover, he explained, 'It is not our choice to tell (Oakland Rising) to do it or not do it.' Oakland Rising isn't the first to face the to-perform-or-not quandary and justify its decision publicly. In February, when Trump appointed himself chair of the center's board, decrying its previous 'woke' programming, specifically targeting LGBTQ content. These moves turned what had long been a bipartisan cultural institution into a highly politicized stage and quickly spurred many artists to withdraw any association. In March, Lin-Manuel Miranda scrapped a run of 'Hamilton,' telling the New York Times, 'We're not going to be a part of it while it is the Trump Kennedy Center.' Meanwhile, Oakland comedian, author and TV host W. Kamau Bell went ahead with a stand-up appearance, posing a moral question in defense of his choice via his Substack: 'Is not showing up in the face of evil always the moral thing to do?' Naima Nascimento, 15, pointed out that there's a big difference between those artists and her. They're famous, and she's not. 'If I don't do it, no one's really going to care, because no one knows who I am,' she explained. A celebrity's absence is leverage; hers would just mean she's sitting at home, influencing little. August Lee Stevens, 25, was the third musician to decide to perform, alongside Naima and DeVeaux. She recalled asking herself, 'What is the intention behind it, and what is it that we want to say?' Done thoughtfully, it was a huge opportunity to represent themselves, their art and Oakland positively, she concluded. 'There sometimes feels like such a gap between my voice and the rest of the world,' she said. 'If I'm being presented this stage where I can go and speak up and make some kind of difference or stand on what I believe in … then I personally thought that was a good opportunity to take.' Micaiah Dempsey, 21, was one of the Oakland Rising members who declined to perform at the Kennedy Center. 'I don't like the idea … of being censored as an artist,' she said. She sees her music as for the people, broadly defined, and 'I just couldn't picture how that would fit in to the Kennedy Center and what currently they were standing for,' referring to the administration's array of 'rash moves' and its policing of artists' free expression. The two sides' reasonings sound similar. Both want to use their art to help others. They just came to very different conclusions about the best means to that end. Dempsey, who notes she's 'proud' of her collaborators for their different but 'beautiful' decision, acknowledges the shared principles. 'There's a bridge, and one person went across it, and the other person said, 'You know what? I'll wait till you reach the other side,'' she said. For the three performing in D.C., their concert might feel different than any other — the momentous decision they've made, being inside the walls of an administration they oppose. 'We're just three Black people from Oakland,' said DeVeaux, who uses gender-neutral pronouns. 'Our music and who we are, simply being on that stage is offense enough to whatever (Trump) may think he's upholding.' DeVeaux has sung in all-white spaces before, they noted, thinking especially of a performance in Eugene, Ore., of a song they wrote called 'Queen' that's dedicated to dark-skinned women who've been told they're not good enough. Being outside of their echo chamber, they said, 'makes me go harder or makes me want to be more purposeful and more punchy.' Three days after the Kennedy Center gig, DeVeaux, Naima and Stevens are scheduled to open for Pulitzer Prize-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens — who in February canceled her own spring Kennedy Center gig — at Mountain Winery in Saratoga. Dempsey was philosophical about what the diverging experiences might mean for the collective. 'As artists, we have the right to protest in doing and not doing. … If (D.C.) ends up being an amazing opportunity for them, that was in their plan,' she said. 'I know my door is coming.'