Bassist off to fast start
Aneesa Strings rises from sea of male jazz players to headline concerts
As legions of music lovers were enjoying the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival at Golden Gate Park last year, Oakland bassist, vocalist and songwriter Aneesa Strings was making her own disparate memories on bandstands in the Bay Area. Strings was a last-minute guest of bass god Christian McBride’s Big Band that Friday at the SFJazz Center. She got a call earlier in the day for the gig, “and I dropped everything,” she says during a recent interview at Zoo Labs in West Oakland, where she’s been recording her sophomore album. After playing double bass during McBride’s opening walk-on and closing walk-off numbers, she was invited to stick around for the encore. There was a sense of coronation as one witnessed her confident next-generation contrabass playing side by side with McBride’s electric bass guitar. The following afternoon at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley, she was at the center of a much-buzzed-about piano trio set at a Puerto Rico benefit concert. Strings, drummer Ruthie Price and pianist Courtney
Knox interpreted Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “How Insensitive,” “Stormy Monday” and, most surprisingly, contemporary soul singer-songwriter Moses Sumney’s “Quarrel.” Strings’ soulful vocals were a standout on Sumney’s recent lament about inequity.
“In a sea of male jazz and Latin music performers, Aneesa stood onstage flanked by two of her female peers and proceeded to bring down the house with her powerful and moving performance,” recalled Rebeca Mauleón, SFJazz director of education.
Living in the Bay Area as an independent musician requires as much hustle as one would expect. Strings teaches, plays both double bass and bass guitar in various settings and has been recording her forthcoming album incrementally.
But the 25-year-old appreciates the musical resources and possibilities available locally, citing the nonprofit Zoo Labs and also Airbnb, which has invited her to participate in its Airbnb Concerts monthly series. She headlines two concerts at the San Francisco Zen Center in Hayes Valley on Sunday, April 1, and May 6, with other dates to be announced.
Nearly “every tech company in the world is here, and so many of them are open to partner with us musicians,” she says. “I feel like I’m really building something here. San Francisco could be the new New York, honestly.”
The youngest of seven children, Strings was born Aneesa Al-Musawwir and raised in Hayward. She attended the now-closed Markham Elementary School and transferred to Westlake Middle School at her mother’s insistence that she’d have better musical opportunities in Oakland.
At her first music class, all her classmates wanted to play violin, so the teacher asked for a volunteer to play the stand-up bass. “I was, like, ‘Whatever,’ ” she recalls with a chuckle. “And as soon as I picked (the double bass) up, I just had the correct hand positions. It came naturally to me — nobody ever told me it was hard to play.”
After her fast start, Strings played in the Young Musicians Program in Berkeley, the Oaktown Workshop and the Oakland Youth Symphony. As a senior at Skyline High School in Oakland, she was a member of the SFJazz High School All-Stars.
“And right away I knew it was important to follow her trajectory once she went off to college,” Mauleón says.
Strings headed down to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California, where she earned her undergraduate degree in jazz studies while taking vocal lessons with members of the jazz faculty. The dual instrumentalist-vocalist continued to sing while earning her master’s degree, also in jazz studies, at Michigan State University.
These days, her original songs have more of a modern lyrical and musical orientation than the blues and jazz standards she also tackles. Adding that vocal element has helped expand her audience. “People who aren’t necessarily familiar with jazz will say, ‘Oh, this is cool because there’s singing involved,’ ” she says.
Singing while playing the stand-up bass is a tricky proposition, but she’s in good company amid a current sorority that includes Esperanza Spalding, Katie Thiroux and, most recently, Linda May Han Oh. “We’re totally cheering each other on,” Strings says.
Mauléon, in turn, fully champions Strings: “To put it bluntly, Aneesa is a bad-ass and a beacon of hope for women in music.”