Dimming one's light in the face of haters is not something Lidia Rodriguez knows how to do. Whenever she gets comments from guys about her size or gender, the baritone player is quick to clap back with a joke and prove them wrong. "When I'm playing my bari sax, I feel huge. I feel powerful. I feel seven feet tall. I feel like no one could tell me s**t. Like I feel so good about myself. "
Lidia Rodriguez is a musical force performing and recording across genre. She gets down playing cumbia with La Misa Negra, rocks stages with electronic group Madame Gandhi, and even goes dumb while performing with the Golden State Warriors brass band, the Bay Blue Notes.
Growing up in Mudville a.k.a Stockton, and later attending San Jose State, Lidia says she is a product of public music education. Now, as an educator herself, teaching bilingual music lessons, Lidia is not only training the next generation of musicians but also nurturing students to be self compassionate and authentically themselves.
On this week's Rightnowish, Lidia Rodriguez talks about the power of showing up as her full self (a queer and Latina saxophonist) in music spaces and her mission to spread the power of "peace, love and sax."
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