A San Francisco family is creating its own music legacy.
There is scant furniture in the living room of the Curtis Family’s apartment in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point. That’s because in the push-pull saga of living room-vs.-rehearsal studio — the furniture ultimately lost out.
“We took all of the furniture out,” confirmed Nola Curtis, the matriarch of the Curtis Family, aka the C-Notes, “instruments only.”
Instead, the family transformed the traditional living room into a gathering place filled with instruments; guitars hanging from walls, a drum set tucked behind plexiglass, keyboards and conga drums ready for a spontaneous jam or one of the family’s live rehearsals streamed on social media. In might not be a living room anymore, per se, but it’s now a living room in a musical sense.
“We used to have to clear it out to practice,” reasoned Kiki Curtis, the family’s left-handed guitar player. “So it’s better this way.”
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It would be tempting to cite the Curtis Family’s living room as the perfect metaphor for the music that has slowly taken over the family identity - growing beyond the normal family unit into something more akin to Partridge Family territory. Parents Maestro and Nola Curtis and their five kids; Zahara, Nile, Kiki, Isis and Phoenix have become darlings of the San Francisco music scene, channeling a funky musical heritage laid down by bands like Sly and the Family Stone and Earth Wind and Fire.
“Music is not something we do,” said Maestro Curtis — a lifelong professional musician and educator who leads the family band, “music is who we are as a Curtis family, and this is what we always try to transmit to everyone.”
Over the last five years or so, the family band has performed at Golden State Warriors games, civic celebrations, a JCPenney commercial, church affairs and on the TV show America’s Got Talent. Questlove and other celebrities routinely name check them on Instagram. The C-Note sound is dipped in soul and gospel, with the kind of glove-like vocal harmonies that seem glued together with DNA.
“To have them to be able to harmonize and then translate that to their instruments as well as reading,” said Maestro Curtis, “it’s been a joy.”
For Maestro, known in the family as Papa C, music was central to his own life growing up in a musical family in Louisiana. He went-on to lead numerous Bay Area bands while also teaching music, along with wife Nola, at San Francisco’s Community Music Center.
He and Nola — who sings and plays percussion — encouraged their kids to sing together, with the open invitation to plunk around on any of the multitude of instruments lying around the family’s apartment. It all came together one night while Papa C was on a phone call — annoyed the kids were blasting the stereo so loud. A stunned Nola dragged him to the living room where he discovered the origin of the music was his kids on instruments playing Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit.
In that moment, Maestro knew he was done leading bands of others - the future would be guiding his own family’s musical trajectory.
“And because they have to do what I tell them to do,” he said with a full-body laugh.
The family’s star ascended during the pandemic when the Curtis’ began streaming weekly musical shows through Community Music Center to bring comfort to those isolated at home. They decided to keep the weekly gig going by streaming their own weekly rehearsals which they call Live Rehearsal Music Monday.
Every week visitors from around the world get a free ticket to the family’s virtual living room to witness band practice, which are equal parts banter and music. Papa C readily stops the songs to have the family perfect a vocal phrase or a groove — lending credence that these are legit rehearsals.
“There’s a certain connection that happens when you’re playing with family,” said Phoenix Curtis, keyboardist and the youngest Curtis.
The family’s apartment just off busy Third Street in Bayview-Hunters Point is more than just a domicile-turned-rehearsal room. It’s also a classroom where the parents homeschool their kids. Alongside math and science — the music is another layer of education.
“The music has been a great vehicle for learning and teaching life lessons,” said Nola Curtis, “and that has contributed to us working really well as a team.”
There was a time not long before the pandemic when the Curtis Family didn’t have a living room - or even a roof over their heads. After what Papa C describes as a conflation of bad luck, the family lost its home and became temporarily homeless, all seven living out of their van. A family musician friend took them in for six months giving them the chance to get back on their feet.
“It has not been a smooth ride,” said Maestro Curtis, his normally lively voice dropping to a sotto voce. “I’m glad the challenges happened because it made us strong - it gave us a bond and a sense of family, I believe the way that family is supposed to operate.”
Inside a C-Note rehearsal, the family’s deep musical bond was fully on display. Harmonies were tight, arrangements locked-in as they wound their way through vintage funk covers and original songs ranging from funky burners to a vocal arrangement of the iconic I Left My Heart in San Francisco. Lead guitarist and oldest child Zahara Curtis worked her fingers across the fretboard of her Stratocaster as if it were a birth rite.
“It’s a dream,” she said, “mostly cause like the evolution of how this came to be and seeing how all my siblings and I have grown — just loving music, loving art.”
Even off the stage, the Curtis Family stands out. The kids dress purposely with a deep genuflect to Black cultural fashion of the 1970s, each kid sporting equally impressive afros.
“Cause of the hair and the way we dress too,” confirmed Nile Curtis, the family’s tall lanky bass player. “It’s very signature.”
As the Curtis’ dug into a song, it was if they hit some other gear - a higher plane where the music and emotion seem to transcend convention — a gospel alchemy that could perhaps only be explained by kinship. It’s the secret sauce that has turned them into a Bay Area treasure.
“If you play together with these people long enough,” said drummer Isis Curtis, “there’s this moment where you feel like you’re ascending into a different reality.”
As far as living rooms go, even without the furniture, this one seemed more alive than most.
