Three years ago, Club Chai threw its first party in a brick-walled room of a West Oakland warehouse. It was an unabashed dance party that went late into the night soundtracked by six eclectic DJs including Club Chai founders FOOZOOL and 8ULENTINA.

On Friday in San Francisco, Club Chai celebrates its third anniversary with an event featuring a stacked line-up of DJs including Oakland’s Fela Kutchii, GHE20G0TH1K founder Venus X and Shyboi from New York’s groundbreaking Discwoman collective.

Since their first party, Esra Canoğullari, who performs as 8ULENTINA, and Lara Sarkissian, AKA FOOZOOL, have grown their project to music workshops, a digital platform and a label that cultivates global musical dialogues.

Though the Oakland music scene has been a spring of experimental sounds for decades, it has largely operated as an underground movement, proudly wearing a chip on its shoulder for never garnering the sort of attention scenes in cities such as Los Angeles and New York do. In more recent years, a wave of Bay Area artists have found success far away from home, resonating with listeners across the globe.

The DJ TR4VI3ZA will be performing at Club Chai’s third anniversary celebration. Photograph: Guerrilla Davis/Handout

Club Chai’s Canoğullari and Sarkissian built a dynamic model that balanced their local presence with a digital one. “We were already thinking about radio and a platform beyond a party and the physical space around it,” explained Sarkissian. That thinking has in part been shaped by the scarcity of physical spaces and resources in Oakland where rising rents and a lack of institutional support have smothered the possibilities for its creatives.

For tonight’s party, the duo had to concede and host their party in neighboring San Francisco. “We’re working on developing relationships with bigger venues in San Francisco but we really want to do more stuff in the East Bay,” explained Canoğullari. “That’s what created what Club Chai is … but we also want to keep people safe. It’s an intense responsibility after something like the fire. We really need to be careful.”

The fire Canoğullari is referring to is the Ghost Ship fire which took the lives of 36 people attending a warehouse party in Oakland in December 2016. “You have to be really sensitive about people’s anxieties especially since we have friends who literally were there,” added Sarkissian.

Berkeley-based experimental musician Tia Cabral, who releases music under the moniker SPELLLING, attests to the lack of space in Oakland. “I find it incredible when I think about what Lara and Esra are doing and [when] I see other artists flourish and find spaces despite the fact that it feels like there’s no spaces,” she said. Last week, Cabral released her second full-length album, an eerie electro-pop bricolage titled Mazy Fly, to critical acclaim from Pitchfork among others.

A self-taught musician, Cabral’s main instrument is a loop-pedal from where she elaborates samples of her vocals and instruments into full-bodied symphonies. Her creative process is a fitting metaphor for creating under the pressure and paucity of the East Bay – a web of rich, orchestral compositions spun out of very little material.

SPELLLING, the Berkeley-based experimental musician. Photograph: Catalina Xavlena

Over the past two years, SPELLLING has performed in the few underground spaces around the East Bay, including a Club Chai party, and alongside collectives such as the Topsy-Turvy Queer Circus, a multidisciplinary crew. She also cites spaces like her former North Oakland residence, aptly dubbed “The Palace of Trife Arts” (a play on San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts), as a type of space that can support creative communities. “There’s lots of little communities like that of people moving in together because they can’t afford their own space and the proximity of artists being together creates abundance in different ways.”

Back in 2017, SPELLLING, along with 20 local and international artists, was a part of a compilation album Club Chai released to mark its first anniversary and label launch. “That’s something that’s really amazing about dance music,” Canoğullari explained. “You create this night, then you create a sound and that sound becomes something that you need to archive.”

Club Chai’s sound is best described by a set of values rather than sonics. Canoğullari and Sarkissian encourage experimentation and center queer and trans artists of color on their platform. The resulting sound is a hybridized electronic music where Club Chai collaborators often draw from their personal narratives and cultural backgrounds. “Everyone was very genuine to their own sound, context and background but it was all still very cohesive,” Sarkissian said of their first compilation. “I was like ‘Yeah this is what fucking makes our parties!’ Everyone coming from different stories … you could really hear that.”

Fela Kutchii is an Oakland native and will be performing at Club Chai’s third anniversary celebration event. Photograph: Handout

In a different corner of Oakland, Smart Bomb, an experimental beat-making party is weaving stories on the second floor of an Irish-themed pub, The Legionnaire Saloon. The monthly bash was founded by Jason Garcia out of a desire to find a space for him and his friends to experiment in a live space. “We made beats but we weren’t the typical hip-hop producers per se,” he explained. “We were doing a lot of experimental stuff and we were working with a lot of different musicians from [the] jazz world, and soul music, and other psychedelic experimental types of music.”

Pitching Smart Bomb to Bay Area venues proved to be difficult with many owners not understanding the concept or draw of his party. Garcia, who performs as Asonic, was finally able to convince the owner of the then newly opened Legionnaire to take a risk on his idea. And it paid off. Now in its sixth year, Smart Bomb’s monthly parties are packed to the brim.

QingQi will be performing at Club Chai’s third anniversary celebration event. Photograph: Handout

“A lot of people are saying we should expand and move out because we’ve outgrown the situation.” Garcia confessed. “I definitely want to keep expanding to larger venues, but I love the real intimate and family-type feel that the Legionnaire has.”

Should Garcia choose to expand, Oakland isn’t teeming with options as far as spaces go. Smart Bomb and Club Chai, whose rosters of DJs and performers intersect, value accessible, DIY spaces – blank canvases they can embellish with visuals and sounds to their liking.

But for now, both projects are making it work in an East Bay landscape under increasing cost of living skewed by Silicon Valley, an industry largely uninvolved in supporting local arts movements. Club Chai’s knack for building connections digitally and locally has propelled their sounds internationally with shows in Europe and internet broadcasts that stream around the globe.

Red Bull Music, along with fellow underground music patron Boiler Room, has taken notice of Oakland’s music scene, both funding a series of events featuring East Bay acts over the past two years. When I ask Canoğullari and Sarkissian if local arts institutions have offered similar support, the two laughed and replied “No.” But the laugh is more telling than the response. Smart Bomb and Club Chai have both grown into platforms that are offering the sort of anchors Oakland’s creative community desperately needs.

“The way that people live their day-to-day life and have a relationship to time is really different here,” Canoğullari explained. “There’s definitely a hustle but the urgency is different. You’re hustling because you really care about what you’re doing and you want to build something for a community.”