Blindfold Test: Local Edition

On valuing the unique touch, contributions and vitality of your friends creative work.

Lately I’ve found myself contemplating the vast chasm between the views and metrics of “success” that artists (and audiences) tend to get caught up in, and the experiences that I personally have actually found meaningful, moving and valuable. I’d like to briefly share three recent experiences from the latter category in hopes that naming these phenomena might also encourage you to see it in your life too.

*side note: This reflection was from a week that was particularly full of these experiences, and is now several months in the past (from January 2025) but I’m keeping with these experiences as I think the combination of them speak to something greater, even if slightly in the past.*

In a time marked by incompetence and collapse in every direction I look…it was truly a healing salve to walk into the El Cerrito Prepared Food Annex Wednesday night and experience the real love and joy that is the binding vital force of music and community. Thank you Javier Navarette and friends for putting together and maintaining the “Annex Sessions” and the Sun Jams organization

The place was so crowded that I couldn’t get close enough to the bandstand to see the band, but I could hear them. Digging through my little to-go box of lasan-chiladas and grilled veggies, I instead just sat there and allowed my body to move and groove to the music. In tuning into that without looking at the band, I was able to recognize the hi hat tone and touch of my good friend and one of my biggest mentors, David Flores, on the drums. David is one of those people that seems to have an archetypal command of his instrument whenever I hear him play, I think, “that’s how I want the fucking drums to sound all the time.” Somehow they often don’t sound like that. But when Dave is in the room, you know it immediately.

Dave is not somebody that’s achieved a lot of recognition or material success in the greater music world as far as those things go, but he’s kept busy and maintained a commitment to his craft that is unshakable and deeply inspiring. I was fortunate enough to take lessons from Dave for five plus years and at the time I was already a “professional” drummer technically (in so much that I was playing gigs for money here and there) But he’s the first one that brought me back to basics and made sure that I knew how to play the instrument with tone and touch and integrity and impeccable time. Beyond the specifics of the gifts that Dave has given to me, which are innumerable and would be far too many to list here in writing, what I found myself appreciating was that even if I didn’t who I was about to go see, I could hear without any shadow of a doubt, the touch of his hi hat tone, and the exact sound that he makes when laying a cross stick on the snare drum, or muting a floor tom from a hundred yards away without laying eyes on him or knowing anything about the band. For what it’s worth I’ve heard this man make similarly brilliant and idiosyncratic tones on the most out of tune and terrible of drums and cymbals, he sounds like himself whether playing a custom Brooks kit, or a paper bag. I’m reminded of the very first time I heard him, I was 15 years old wandering around the San Jose Jazz Festival and stumbled upon the John Santos Sextet doing their thing, Dave took a drum solo and I thought to myself “that’s the best drummer I’ve ever heard.” The rest is history, but it’s precisely his touch, energy, and sound that drew me closer to him and a whole other community of musicians whom I wouldn’t know without him.

That level of blindfold test is usually reserved for the household names of the various people in our lineage. Sure, it’s fun to see a new young drummer try to pass a blindfold test for some jazz magazine and see if they can identify the difference between Roy Haynes and Elvin Jones or Kenny Clark and Max Roach, etc. But what I’m contemplating is how often do we afford the same level of attention, appreciation, care and reverence for those in our immediate community who are almost certainly not household names, not famous by any metric that matters, but are equally, if not more important than the “big names” that have shaped the art forms, specifically because of their relationship to us as community members and students of theirs, etc.

Randee Paufve teaching at Bandaloop Studios -Oakland CA

I had the great privilege the following morning of attending (observing) a dance class by Randee Paufve at Bandaloop studios in West Oakland. Randee has been living and teaching in the Bay Area for the better part of her adult life and over 30 plus years has built a robust community of dancers that look up to her and value being in her field. I got a rare opportunity to just witness and be in that field on Thursday morning and it was equal parts calming and electrifying.

The way Randee led that class was almost akin to a small religious gathering. It involved circling up, sharing important dates people had coming up, anything going on in their lives that felt like worth sharing, making sure everyone knew each other’s names, leaving space for everyone to ask questions and contemplate what’s being offered.

Randee has this amazing ability to live in the center of the paradox demonstrating with a beautiful kindness and gentleness, while also holding space for a deep capacity for rigorous attention and work ethic. She never said these words directly, but it’s as if her teaching said, “I don’t mind if you move exactly how I do, but have you noticed how your right toe affects your center of gravity as you circle around this direction?” Both a casual acceptance of you as a student coming as you are, but also an invitation to a deeper level of understanding and presence with both the material at hand and the collective community in the room. It was nothing short of stunning to watch that unfold.

It has been said that you can’t observe gravity directly but only the effect it has on objects in its field. Rupert Sheldrake has some pretty far out thoughts about how to observe what he calls “morphogenetic fields” in similar fashion which you can feel free to look up if you’re interested in “heretical” science.

Similarly I’ve been able to observe the impact of Randee’s work through the effect that it’s had on other dancers in her field. I was fortunate enough to see both a series of solos and duets from Randee’s extensive choreographic history a couple of years ago at a fundraiser concert in El Cerrito as well as her recent evening length show called Sisters, both of which featured the dancing of my partner Molly Levy.

Watching rehearsal clips that Molly showed me over the months preparing for those shows and watching the shows themselves and some of the dance classes, I’m now starting to see a really natural and not forced way that Randee’s approach to movement is affecting Molly’s choices in choreography and improvisation as a dancer. I’m also noticing that effect and also hearing very directly the reverence for which Molly and other dancers in the community hold Randee. Her approach to movement and approach to community building as a whole is nothing short of inspiring.

I should note there were less than 20 dancers in that class, the other day, and yet it felt like an army of people willing to channel their energy into something beautiful, something that left the world a little better than it was found 90 min ago. And that’s exactly the kind of energy I’m trying to pull focus on by writing about these experiences.

Fast forward 24 hours and I’m sitting here at my studio listening to voice memos that a couple of friends sent me of some songs that they’ve just written. I feel extremely fortunate to be in the close circle of a handful of people that trust me with the early development of a song, as if to say, “hey, I made this thing. I think it’s really good, but I’m not quite sure if it’s bullshit or if I’ve just spent too much time on it or what, can you check it out?” Noaa Rienecker has been doing his darndest to keep the channel open amidst battling through a reemergence of tendonitis and injury recovery with his guitar playing.

I’m so proud of him for so many things, not the least of which is initiating a serious about face towards a sober lifestyle in his late 20s and also working really diligently to keep his creative channel open through poetry, piano playing and otherwise while only being able to play the guitar for sometimes less than five minutes a day before pain would creep in. In this dark period of incubation, he’s been writing some amazing songs. We already recorded and released an album of really beautiful, amazing songs of his that I’m super proud of, and it’s the first record I had the privilege of being called a “producer” on. You can check out “In the Language of Dreams” here

So I’m sitting here listening through my nice studio speakers, to this voice memo that Noaa sent me, that is effortlessly imbued with his essence, his touch, his sense of aesthetic sensibility, his influences, and overall his own unique sound. This song announces its presence boldly at first then dips back into this freely moving rubato, almost spontaneous exposition. In conversations with Noaa recently we bonded over a shared love of Joanna Newsom, new to him but one of my favorite songwriters for a long time. I was shocked to hear how much of an influence her approach already had on his new material, and it made perfect sense to me. They’re both absolute virtuosos on their instruments, gorgeously and thoroughly poetic, and deeply sensitive people.

Listening to Noaa wail on over his electric guitar about a cup of coffee somehow I found myself moved to tears. Unexpected quick and powerful tears, just barely held beneath the surface. For a short moment I thought my good friend might not be able to play guitar like he used to, perhaps this time he wouldn’t recover from injury, perhaps any number of things might intervene in his life that could keep him from writing and performing these powerful songs, and here he was unleashing it all into this brilliant and completely idiosyncratic new song.

And I’m just sitting here in total shock and awe at how unbelievably gorgeous and meaningful that sound is to me. I didn’t know that I needed to hear that sound, of Noaa and his guitar and his voice, but the moment I received it, I was moved to tears. The sound itself is the thing. Randee referenced in her post-show interview after “Sisters”, the famous quote, “the medium is the message.” I remember it was so beautiful to watch sisters unfold and see how well the medium of dance was just translated into a cohesive and coherent whole that all said and done made me cry multiple times, made my heart explode open with passion and awe and terror sometimes all at once.

I feel extremely fortunate and blessed to be surrounded by a community of artists in various fields, mostly music, but also visual art, photography, dance, etc. who have the utmost dedication to their craft, and through a lifelong process of committing to that have created sounds and approaches that are unmistakably original without worrying about *trying* to be original. And the main thing I’m reflecting on is how lucky I am to be surrounded by people like that that have given me the example and the fire to keep going.

I can’t help but reflect on the fact that none of these people are household names. I’m almost certain you’ve never heard of any of them. Point being sometimes the people we think are the “best” musicians out there are just the ones that have the biggest marketing budgets. In the old and frankly dead age of monoculture they are the names that have been presented to you as the ones to “look out for.” I feel that it’s important to develop your own sense of taste and more specifically just sensitivity. If you are constantly waiting for somebody else to tell you what’s good you’re having an indirect experience with the thing in front of you.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people recite marketing slogans back to me after seeing a show “This kid is the next John Coltrane.” or “This singer is gonna be the next Ella Fitzgerald.” What I hear when those things come around to me is… “I just heard this music and I have no idea what to think or feel about it, so here’s some marketing hype.” It tells me that you didn’t have a direct experience with the performance. Not to say some of the young people being featured at festivals and published in big magazines and major labels aren’t legitimately amazing, and doing something interesting… but you shouldn’t be interested because of the hype, there has to be something directly in the performance itself that moves you, and that’s how you know something is good or even great.

Robert Glasper once said “John Coltrane’s not a god, he was a human being.” I really resonate with that. He followed it by saying “And someday I’m gonna be better than him.” If it’s not clear already, I find this sentiment to be missing the point entirely. I want to know what music makes me explode with passion, or cry with tenderness, or just moves my simple animal body to dance uncontrollably. None of this has anything to do with “who’s the next John Coltrane.” but instead it’s about remaining open and limber enough to have a deep and meaningful experience with what's right in front of you.

If you open your ears and your heart, I think you’ll find that there’s plenty of richness in the community around you. As I bring this reflection to a conclusion, I find myself wishing for a world where people have as much reverence and care and attention to detail for artists who are right in front of them, instead of waiting to be told who’s good and why.

This article would be too long if I got going on every single person in my community I feel this way about, but do know there’s dozens of others I can and will elaborate upon in detail…If you haven’t already, consider reading my impressions of Christina Galisatus new project from a few months back. perhaps more to come!

Thanks as always for reading. Who are some artists in your community who have moved you deeply?