Los Rakas and the Oakland Roots Usher In a New Era

Now that the elephant, the clowns and the circus have left the Town, we can focus on sports teams that are actually rooted in the East Bay. 

The Oakland Roots, a USL Championship league soccer club that was founded in 2018, has been all about this community since its inception. Along with its sister organization, the women’s team Oakland Soul (founded in 2023), the Roots have shown what it means to be steeped in the place they call home.

The club was founded by Edreece Arghandiwal and Benno Nagel, two local soccer fans who love Oakland. As an organization, they’ve signed players from Northern California, hired Bay Area DJs to spin at their games and invited some extremely talented local artists to performing during halftime. They’ve incorporated key aspects of their fanbase’s culture into their sporting events, and they’ve even managed to keep ticket prices reasonable. 

Earlier this week the Roots took their community efforts a step further by debuting a fly new jersey that celebrates Oakland’s diversity, Latin American culture and the influence of the African diaspora.

The jersey is a combined effort between the Roots, athletic clothing brand CHARLY and Oakland’s Afro-Latin hip-hop duo, Los Rakas.

Designed by Torron Thompson and Taulib Ikharo, the kit highlights Latin America’s cultural wealth. The jersey has a black base with a multicolored skeletal outline of a ribcage on the front, a nod to calaveras, or sugar skulls, that are a staple in Día de Los Muertos celebrations.

Around the skeleton is a design that’s inspired by a textile that can be found in places like Colombia, Peru and Panama; it’s known as Mola. 

Raka Dun and Raka Rich, the Panamanian duo who make up Los Rakas, say this was added to highlight the Indigenous culture of their native Central American soil. 

“The Panamanians made it cool, they’re the ones who really rep it,” says Raka Rich of the Mola textile. “Especially the Afro-Panamanians.”

Raka Dun explains that the Mola design, full of colorful figures and intricate lines, has a cultural relevance that’s comparable to that of Kente cloth in the West African country of Ghana.

For jersey designer Ikharo, a Nigerian American DJ and former professional football player who was raised in Oakland, it was imperative to show the connections between Latin heritage and the broader African diaspora.

“I thought it was very important to tie that in,” says Ikharo. “It’s important to show that we are one.”

The jersey, which will only be available for purchase at this Sunday’s game, debuted earlier this week by way of a social media ad campaign. In the video, Los Rakas and a mariachi band are posted around an altar, an ofrenda, in the middle of East Oakland’s lush green Redwood Regional Park.

There, between the dense trees that only allow scattered rays of sunlight through, Raka Dun and Raka Rich recite poetic verses in Spanish that reference life and death as they honor Hispanic Heritage Month and Día de Los Muertos.

“The poem that we did,” says Raka Dun, “we did it for our brother, Big Smoke, he recently passed away.”

Raka Rich shares an “RIP Big Smoke” as he echoes the sentiment of mourning their friend, who was also known as Anthony Stringfield, an MC and dancer who performed alongside Los Rakas since the early 2000s.

Los Rakas’ work in the community and on stages around the Bay Area has been widely recognized, and this jersey is something that’s been brewing for some time. 

“We literally talked about it like 10 years ago,” Rich reflects. “We really said, ‘When we blow up we’re gonna buy a soccer team and bring it to Oakland’.”

Although Los Rakas aren’t the owners of the team, it’s still a major accomplishment. “To be able to come out with a soccer jersey is something we always thought about,” says Dun. “And to do it with the official Oakland soccer team, it’s like a dream come true.”

The Grammy-nominated duo isn’t new to partnering with other entities. In the past they’ve collaborated on a sneaker with the Puma shoe company, created a board design with San Francisco-based skate company FTC and had a song featured in the soccer video game FIFA.

But this work with the Roots is different.

This debut comes the same week as the Oakland A’s final baseball game in the Town. And as the Roots are set to play games at the abandoned Oakland Coliseum next year, Raka Dun recognizes the bigger picture. “It’s the end of an era, and the beginning of a new era,” he says.

The new soccer jersey will only be available for purchase at this Sunday’s Roots game, during which Los Rakas will perform.

When asked what fans should anticipate at this weekend’s event, Raka Dun says, “Expect people to get out of their seat, and have a good time.” He adds, “It’s going to be a Raka party.” 

The Oakland Roots play FC Tulsa at California State University, East Bay’s Pioneer Stadium in Hayward at 3 p.m. on Sept. 29. Tickets and details here.