Hitomi Oba - Part 6

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 161: Hitomi Oba - Part 6

In this week’s episode, we talk to Hitomi Oba about her reflection on not having any mentors who shared her identity as an Asian-American mother, the importance of collaborating with people in diverse social environments as well as others with similar identities, and the power of feeling socially safe in music environments. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Hitomi Oba, check her out here: https://www.hitomioba.com/. This episode was originally recorded in December 2023.

This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano),  as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/17156365

Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Sam Mason

Chapters

• 0:22 In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Hitomi Oba, who we spoke to in December 2023.
• 0:30 When you listed the many mentors... it was a pretty wide bunch, but there weren't too many that I caught that looked like you or you know, were sharing either gender or Asian identity. Would that have been different if you'd had mentors like you?

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC BEGINS] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Hitomi Oba, who we spoke to in December 2023. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] When you listed the many mentors, and you know that you're going to wake up like at three o'clock in the morning and realize that one person you really should have mentioned, 

Hitomi Oba  00:38

[laughs] 

Nanette McGuinness  00:38

but beyond that, when you listed them, it was a pretty wide bunch, but there weren't too many that I caught that looked like you or you know, were sharing either gender or Asian identity. 

Hitomi Oba  00:51

Yeah. 

Nanette McGuinness  00:51

Would that have been different if you'd had mentors like you?

Hitomi Oba  00:56

Yeah, I am so grateful for the mentors I've had, and, yeah, the women have been significant. You know, even as a young person, I think I had a larger share of women, especially in jazz, as educators, than a lot of peers. So I'm very thankful for that. There were, like, maybe a couple mothers, you know, who people who had children while I was studying with right? 

Nanette McGuinness  01:22

Right, right. [laughs]

Hitomi Oba  01:23

But, yeah, definitely, I have never studied with an Asian-American mother, you know? 

Nanette McGuinness  01:30

Right. 

Hitomi Oba  01:32

It's, so, I definitely would have appreciated having more mentors, you know, I think subconsciously, it would have normalized it for me a lot more to think, you know, "Oh, yeah, of course, this is absolutely someone, something that people do," you know? [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  01:47

They do it, I can do it.

Hitomi Oba  01:48

Yeah! And, you know, not even, you know, mostly subconsciously, I think, right, just to be like, "Yeah, this is a normal thing." And I think there would have been times where I would have appreciated being able to ask someone I trusted for, you know, questions, and ask them for advice. For sure, there have been a lot of specific situations where I would have appreciated that, especially as I became an adult, I think. And I also wonder if I had had, like a really thoughtful Asian-American composer or saxophonist as a mentor in my youth, maybe I might not have had as many defense mechanisms. And that's not to say that they were against, you know, towards my existing mentors, but just like maybe the landscape would have felt a lot different in general, if I'd had someone like that. So I might have, you know, like the cultural conditioning, it might have been a little bit different, I think, in terms of how I approached all of these works, workspaces, yeah. But also, you know, there's also the thing of it being, like, even if there had been some like that, assuming that this had been one person who had been an Asian American, you know, woman who was a saxophonist, or maybe a mother as well, assuming that there's like, maybe one person like that in the landscape, and it she was still in the minority, then I'm wondering if, in like society's eyes, it would have trivialized my work a little bit and boiled it down to our shared traits, you know? So unless it was much more widespread, you know. So it was like, "Yes, I had five mentors like that," 

Nanette McGuinness  03:25

[laughs] 

Hitomi Oba  03:27

and it was so normal for that to be a thing, if they're, you know, if it'd been just one, and I had been her only mentee who looked like her, then, you know, any associations from the outside would have been focused on the fact that we were women and that we were Asian-American, right?

Nanette McGuinness  03:41

Right. 

Hitomi Oba  03:42

So I think...

Nanette McGuinness  03:42

The token. 

Hitomi Oba  03:44

The token still, it would have been the novelty still. So the, you know, unfortunately, I think the association might have just like, heightened those token attributes, you know.

Nanette McGuinness  03:52

Yeah. 

Hitomi Oba  03:54

Yeah, it's a tough question. Of course, I would have loved to have someone like that, but, you know, I think the idea is that it would have been nice for that to be much, even more widespread, so that, you know, I wasn't the only Asian girl. [laughs] 

Nanette McGuinness  04:05

Yeah, thank you, right? [laughs]

Hitomi Oba  04:07

There are more and more, though, even as I was in college, I was seeing more people who looked like me, [laughs] you know, in all of these, you know, fields, especially in the you know, you know, saxophone, playing improvised, improvisational world and playing saxophone. So I'm very encouraged. You know, I have more women in my program at school than ever, you know, 

Nanette McGuinness  04:27

Wow, that's great! 

Hitomi Oba  04:28

So, yeah, it's been good. And recently, you know, Nanette, it is like questions coming at a great time, because I've been just this year, just this half year, I've been involved more with Asian-American creative artists, you know, I named some of my mentors, Jon Jang, Francis Wong, and I've been involved with more like I just my record just came out...

Nanette McGuinness  04:48

Congratulations. 

Hitomi Oba  04:48

Thank you! with Asian-American improv records, which is based in Chicago. So I just flew out to their, you know, I'll do a show there, and I got to meet a lot of people of various disciplines, you know, in the creative Asian arts community there. 

Nanette McGuinness  04:49

Oh, cool. 

Hitomi Oba  05:03

And it, and, you know, I've also had more peers who are mothers now. You know, my generation had more peers. 

Nanette McGuinness  05:09

[laughs] Right, right.

Hitomi Oba  05:10

So, I was just on a jazz gig. I got to, like, you know, talk about raising toddlers with one of the, you know, keyboardists. And these, these situations have been so nourishing. [laughs] 

Nanette McGuinness  05:20

Yeah, yeah. 

Hitomi Oba  05:21

It feels very different. Obviously, I think it's really important to engage with like, you know, diverse social environments, you know, and to engage with people who are not like me, because it's, you know, it's so important just to, just to be a person who can, you know, empathize with different people, understand that the world is very diverse, but also being able to talk with people who do share a lot of similar experiences, I think that's what it comes down to, right? It's not just the fact that we look similar, but it's that we've experienced, we have shared experience based on the fact that we look similar. 

Nanette McGuinness  05:55

Right, right. 

Hitomi Oba  05:56

So, yeah, or that, you know, in the case of the mother, it's like we have shared experiences, you know, that are very specific to our situations, you know, and circumstances. So that has been it felt very different. And I felt a sense of, like, relief in those situations, which I think is conducive to being creative, right?

Nanette McGuinness  06:19

Safety. 

Hitomi Oba  06:19

Yeah, feeling relief and ease. And, you know, I played a free jazz set with these, like, very new people I'd never played with before, you know. But like, the environment was felt so different, and it felt so comfortable, you know, it...they were all strangers I met for the first time, but it felt, it felt...it was a new experience for me, yeah, and being able to share experience to the other peer mothers, you know, musician mothers, especially, you know, in my workspaces that usually I don't encounter those kind of couples, but it's been such, you know, there's such, like, a whoosh of relief in those situations too. It really, really helps. And I didn't realize how much, you know, I think, conceptually, I knew it's like, yeah, you know, like, you know, like, I did a jazz girls day a couple years ago. You know, to be like, yeah, girls, you know, playing, you know, in a safe space, you know, improvised music in a safe space around other girls. You know, I knew logically in my head what, how that could be powerful. But like, Yeah, I think I've been experiencing a little bit more firsthand and like, being more aware enough to realize my own reactions to those situations more so it's been, yeah. I think there's great importance to that yeah,

Nanette McGuinness  07:29

Maybe affecting you enough that you might try to propagate it.

Hitomi Oba  07:33

Absolutely. absolutely. Maybe more jazz girls days.

Nanette McGuinness  07:37

Yeah, that's what I was thinking as you were telling me about that. 

Hitomi Oba  07:38

[laughs] Yeah, yeah, for younger people, especially now that you know, but yeah, so I think it's important to work within a lot of different kinds of workspaces. I think yeah and social spaces.

Nanette McGuinness  07:51

Agreed that otherwise the unconscious influences, 

Hitomi Oba  07:55

Yeah!

Nanette McGuinness  07:56

skewed. That's the best way to say it.

Hitomi Oba  07:58

Absolutely. 

Nanette McGuinness  07:59

[OUTRO MUSIC BEGINS] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure and a special thank you to our guest, Hitomi Oba, for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button, and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at e4tt.org. This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to co- producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]