{"id":463518,"date":"2026-09-14T17:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T17:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/463518\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T17:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T17:08:12","slug":"best-of-the-bay-2026-editors-pick-destiny-muhammad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/463518\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of the Bay 2026 Editors’ Pick: Destiny Muhammad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Polls are open for our 2026 Best of the Bay!\u00a0Vote here now<\/a>, and enjoy our\u00a0Editors\u2019 Picks<\/a>\u00a0of our favorite Bay Area things, which we\u2019ll be posting throughout the month and beyond.<\/p>\n

There is a duality of modes that certain harpists subscribe to. Track harpist Dorothy Ashby, one of the very first to bring the harp into a prominent role in jazz, or the regal Alice Coltrane\u2014whose husband, saxophone legend John Coltrane, bought a harp for her but never got the opportunity to hear how his life partner would become a legend herself.<\/p>\n

Or even tap into Grammy-winning harpist Brandee Younger, who meanders through an \u201cAfrofuturist sonic palette\u201d to strike a balance between old-school hip-hop and R&B that she\u2019s known for fusing-stretching jazz ideas alongside the rich church background she grew up with. You can see a pattern, a tradition of blending the melodic with the sublime, mixing multiple genre palettes. <\/p>\n

Bay Area fans of jazz, soul, and supreme music are lucky to have Oakland\u2019s own singer and harpist, Destiny Muhammad, self-described \u201charpist from the hood\u201d and sonic storyteller, mixing jazz, Celtic, and classical traditions here in the Bay. <\/p>\n

Playing family matinee shows at SFJAZZ, where she\u2019s able to introduce the harp as another voice in the jazz idiom for the younglings to consider; holding court with her trio on the Great Lawn of Yerba Buena Gardens; or participating in a Dorothy Ashby Birthday Celebration at the Four Star Theatre during a screening of the iconic Valley of the Dolls, Muhammad illustrates how this instrument can be incorporated into a number of musical settings.<\/p>\n

A surprise encounter sparked love for the harp in Destiny\u2014at nine years old, she watched Harpo Marx playing one on an episode of \u201cI Love Lucy.\u201d Unfortunately, a hardscrabble upbringing kept the instrument out of reach for almost 30 years, during which Muhammad opened her own barbershop. It was only when she dated a harp builder that her musical destiny was sealed. \u201cThat\u2019s when the dream came rushing back,\u201d Muhammad told KQED in 2024. \u201cDidn\u2019t I say I wanted to do this when I was a shorty back in Compton, watching an episode of\u00a0\u2018I Love Lucy\u2019? I said I wanted to do this!\u201d<\/p>\n

She soon went to musical school to discover her gifts and share them with the Bay Area, wielding the complexities of instrument like a Swiss Army knife, arpeggiating from one genre to another. We\u2019re so lucky to benefit from that fated encounter. <\/p>\n

Catch a family matinee with Destiny Muhammed at SF JAZZ Saturday, September 19, at 11am. More info here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Polls are open for our 2026 Best of the Bay!\u00a0Vote here now, and enjoy our\u00a0Editors\u2019 Picks\u00a0of our favorite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-463518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}