When Destiny Muhammad was a 9-year-old living in Compton, she saw Harpo Marx playing the harp on the beloved sitcom, I Love Lucy. She knew instantly in her heart that that was her future and her destiny.
A $400 layaway plan, classical lessons and unwavering belief later, Muhammad began rewriting what the harp could sound like. Over the past three decades she has expanded the possibilities of the 4,500-year-old instrument, pushing it into jazz, improvisation and entirely new sonic territory.
About three years into her first lessons, Muhammad was introduced to the music of Dorothy Ashby, an American jazz harpist and vocalist. Despite her previous teachings focusing on European classical song structures, Muhammad was entranced by the freedom of improvisation and continued to draw on inspiration from the likes of Miles Davis and Alice Coltrane. Speaking of these musical giants, she says, “I knew I was going to walk in that legacy.”
Today she plays in a style she calls “from Celtic to Coltrane,” blending classical music theory with the freeflowing, electric language of jazz. She works as a performer, composer and teacher in the Bay Area, and composes original scores for the Destiny Muhammad Trio. Her sound bends genre conventions and invites listeners into a rich world of sound and color.
Muhammad arrived in Oakland in 1997, and the city has consistently shaped her sound and herself.
“I live in downtown Oakland at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, which is the home of the drum, coming straight off of Africa,” she says, “and so I am surrounded by Balafon dance and music. I’m very percussive in the way that I play, and even the sounds that probably come from me as I share jazz.”
She also explains how Oakland’s vibrant creative community cannot be divorced from the political and social context in which it exists.
“The sound of Oakland and the arts of Oakland are always on some level going to talk about how to make sure that all folks within it are fully expressed spiritually, mentally, emotionally, financially, economically, housing …” she says. “Making sure that they’re respectful of the histories of Oakland from now, from this point on until into perpetuity.”
That belief extends beyond the stage. Muhammad says the real magic of music happens at live performances, where audiences and musicians create something together in the moment.
Muhammad says that the harp allows her to express her deepest and truest self when words fail. Words can even be a limitation, as she declares that her instrument narrates the sound of her soul. Sounds, to Muhammad, are a means of connection across vast and diverse audiences. They can present new ideas, incite revolutionary action and engender personal freedom.
Her creative process is largely intuitive and relies on a commitment to self-trust. While Muhammad has always had a strong sense of her intuition, tapping into it has been a large part of her creative journey.
“The opportunity was for me to start to engage with it, and to trust it,” she says. “Sometimes with musicians, we’ll get a melody line and we say, ‘Oh, that’s nothing. It’s too simple,’ and we’ll walk away from it because it’s not some great, outlandish piece.”
However, she says it would be a mistake to stop there.
“What I have come to realize in my few decades on the planet—I’m trusting everything that comes through,” Muhammad says. “I get a sweet melody line that might be two or three notes. I sing it into my voice memo. I sit down at my harp. I don’t even change the key. I don’t ask what that is. I know that I have to trust it and play it.”
Her artistic journey, of course, has come with some circumstantial road bumps. Covid spared no one, and the live-music business all but flatlined. Muhammad saw this as an opportunity to get creative. She started doing haircuts out of her apartment, recalling her pre-harp days as a barber. Her husband did auto-detailing, and the pair trusted each other to get through the hard times. That’s exactly what they did.
Most artists’ self-doubt, she says, comes from the poison of comparison. Because she started playing later than most, Muhammad did not feel she had time for that. She takes inspiration from and deeply appreciates her peers, but isn’t caught up in competition.
“Now, what I get to do is enjoy what other folks are doing, respect that, maybe have some conversation with that, but still trust my own divine process,” she says. “That’s a faith walk, and it ain’t for cowards.”
Muhammad encourages young people who are interested in music to set aside their reservations and just go for it. Due diligence is a young creative’s greatest asset. She says it’s important to go back in time and study music legends, not just in the way that they played but in the way that they carried themselves. The next step is to find one’s personal place in the music.
She says, “Find someone whose tonality really speaks to you and absorb that, and then play what they play. And when something jumps out, trust it. Don’t try to say, ‘Oh, they would never do it that way.’ Say, ‘This is the way that I’ll be doing it.’”
The next step, she says, is to find a teacher who can root one’s musical journey in mutual respect. To this day, she calls her music teacher from 30 years ago and asks for guidance or support.
Lastly, she says, it’s crucial to dedicate oneself to their practice through trust and self-love. Waiting on someone else’s permission will lead to never starting anything at all. Comparison will kill progress and joy.
“If you see someone who’s about your age, a little bit older, and they’re out there and they’re flossing at it,” she says, laughing, “know that that shit did not happen overnight.”
She often returns to a line from Miles Davis—“Sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.”
Destiny Muhammad will play the Bloom Ball on Thursday, Oct. 15, 6pm at Hotel Nikko, 150 Ellis St., San Francisco; and Soulful Joy on Friday, Dec. 18, 7pm at Grace Cathedral, 1100 California St., San Francisco. Listen to the Destiny Muhammad Trio at destinymuhammad1.bandcamp.com. For more info visit destinymuhammad.net.
