Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Hitomi Oba and Sea Novaa

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 189: Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Hitomi Oba and Sea Novaa

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Today we revisit Hitomi Oba’s and Sea Novaa’s perspectives on their mentors. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Hitomi Oba and Sea Novaa, check them out here and here. Parts of this episode originally premiered in June 2025, click here, and July 2021, click here.

This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, SF Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, 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/18486580

Co-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, Christy Xu

Chapters

• 0:29 Today we revisit Hitomi Oba's and Sea Novaa's perspectives on how things would be different if they had mentors who looked like them. Here's what Hitomi Oba had to say.
• 7:43 Here's what Sea Novaa had to say.

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our Da Capo Conversations, a mini-series where we'll be giving familiar segments a topical twist. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] Today we revisit Hitomi Oba's and Sea Novaa's perspectives on how things would be different if they had mentors who looked like them. Here's what Hitomi Oba had to say.

Hitomi Oba  00:41

I am so grateful for the mentors I've had, and, yeah, the women have been significant. I 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? But, yeah, definitely, I have never studied with an Asian American mother, you know, right? It's so I definitely would have appreciated having more mentors, you know, I think subconsciously, I would have normalized it for me a lot more to think, right, you know, oh, yeah, of course, this is absolutely someone, something that people do, you know,

Nanette McGuinness  01:29

I can do it. They do it. I can do it, yeah.

Hitomi Oba  01:31

And, you know, not even, you know, mostly subconsciously, I think, right, just really, 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 you know, 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, really thoughtful Asian American, you know, 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 had 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, assuming that this had been one person who had been an Asian American, you know, woman who was this active woman who's been coming skin covers, or maybe a mother as well, assuming that there's like, maybe one person like that in the landscape, and 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, and it was so normal for that to be a thing if there, you know, if it'd been just one, and I'd have 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 and right. So I think the token, the token, still, it would have been a novelty, still. So the, you know, unfortunately, I think the association might have just like, heightened those token attributes, you know. So, yeah, um, 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. Yeah, thank you, right. There are more and more, though, even as I was in college, I was seeing more people who looked like me. You know, in all of these, you know, fields, especially in, 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, that's great. So, yeah, it's been good. And recently, you know, and it's 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, John Jang, Francis Wong, and I've been involved with more like I just, my record, just came out with Asian American Thank you. Asian American improv, Asian American improv records, which is based in Chicago. So I just flew out to their, you know, do a show there, and I got to meet a lot of people of various disciplines, you know, in the creative Asian Americans community there. Oh, cool. And it, and, you know, I've also had more peers who are mothers. Now, you know, my generation, more peers, you know, right? So it's 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, 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, right, right, right? So, or that, you know, in 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 sense of like relief in those situations, which I think is conducive to being creative, right? So, like, I played a free Yes, say yeah, feeling relief and ease. And, you know, I played a free Jessup 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. You know, they were all strangers. I met for the first time, but it felt, it felt it was a new experience for me, yeah, and yeah, and being able to, yeah, 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 people has been, 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  07:12

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

Hitomi Oba  07:16

Absolutely, absolutely. Maybe more jazz girls days. 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  07:32

Yeah. Agree, agree that, that otherwise the unconscious influences...

Hitomi Oba  07:38

Yeah

Nanette McGuinness  07:38

...skewed, that's the best way to say it.

Hitomi Oba  07:41

Absolutely.

Nanette McGuinness  07:43

Here's what Sea Novaa had to say.

Sea Novaa  07:45

Absolutely. I really think so. And I say this mainly because I hear a lot of people explaining how important that is to see people who look like them in a particular space. And for me, I just as long as you're human and you're doing something, I immediately think I have the ability to do it. Doesn't matter you know what, what sex or gender or color you are, but I will say that I go out of my way because given you know, we look at the disparities, let's say, of black composers, or disparities of any other non white composer in the Western Hemisphere, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's obviously, because of the disparities and other aspects, you know, it's just not an, it's not yet an equal opportunity to either get the music education or the exposure or whatnot. So I think that from, I mean, also, like, support family, to support community, to the resources. So, um, I feel like, um, you know, when I do see people of color who are composers and they're out there essentially doing or trying to do what I'm doing, which is self expression and art creation. I'm, you know, I'm going to support it, regardless to me, as long as it's authentic. Yeah, I'm going to be there and and I do know how important it is for other people to see role models. I mean, whether it's I hear women talk about how it's important for them to see women in leadership at companies and so forth, or to be a people of color and professor, professor role. So I, yeah, I support it. I... For me, it's also inspiring. Um, yeah, it's inspiring. I have to say, like it's never been where I felt like I couldn't accomplish anything because there wasn't a black woman. But that is to say, if there is one, even all the better.

Nanette McGuinness  10:33

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure's Da Capo Conversations, and a special thank you to our guests 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 www.E4TT.org. This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, 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]