11. Mako Sica & Hamid DrakeRonda
They’re a group of guys from Chicago. They were coming out to a lot of concerts that I was doing. One day they got the courage to ask me if I would do something with them. They had been meaning to ask for a long time but they were a little nervous. They’re all friends with a friend of mine, Matthew. He just told them: ‘Go up to Hamid and say that Matt sent you.’ And that’s what they did. I love those guys, because they’re coming from a very improvisational place but a whole different kind of music. More of an electronica, rock-trance world. When it comes to qualities, there’s no difference. Maybe sound, yeah. But what the music is about, it’s not different at all. We’ve been doing a lot of gigs around Chicago. It’s interesting because it’s a different, but also similar audience. A lot of people who come to those concerts also come to the purely improvisational or jazz concerts too. That’s one of the things I love about Chicago. There’s a seamlessness between all these different genres.
