As a lifelong musician, Oakland Latin percussionist Javier Navarrette had climbed some steep musical mountains; he played with many of his childhood heroes, traveled to Cuba and Brazil to study percussion, and even played in a band backing the legend Aretha Franklin. 

But as the pandemic in 2020 quashed all gatherings and concerts, like every musician, he was left pondering life and purpose. 

"If you get through this," Navarrette asked himself early on in the pandemic, "what is it you want to do for the rest of your life?" 

His response to his self-submitted query came through action; as soon as restrictions eased a bit he began organizing outdoor performances with he and fellow musicians playing a "safe distance" apart. He fittingly dubbed his group Javier Navarrette and his Socially Distant Friends, bringing Brazilian and Cuban rhythms to a music-starved audience. 

He embraced music as he never had before. It seemed the absence of music, his love of it and its cultural inflections began to deepen - what had once felt like youthful passion now sat atop the pinnacle of his own theoretical pyramid, of what Abraham Maslow called the Hierarchy of Needs. Music was now above food, and esteem. 

"Music is more than just an entertainment for people to just dance," Navarrette discovered. "It’s a whole vital source of life." 

Navarrette first cut a path to his chosen instruments, congas and other percussion, growing up in the city of Fresno in California's Central Valley, where his family's deep ties to Michoacán, Mexico rooted him its culture. 

His uncle Ismael Rodriguez played in Bay Area Latin bands, and the music trickled down to his nephew. When Navarrette first heard a rehearsal tape of his uncle playing a rhumba rhythm, it ignited the pistons in his internal engine. Upon his high school graduation he dove into the deep end of afro-Caribbean music, traveling to Cuba to study its sound and techniques. 

"I got involved with learning the history of the music," Navarrette said, "where it comes from, the culture." 

While finding his musical wings in Fresno, Navarrette linked-up with a core group of musicians and applyied his growing love of Latin percussion to a variety of genres. He followed life's rhythms to the Bay Area where he got to see and play with some of his musical heroes like percussionist John Santos and violinist Anthony Blea. 

In 2015 he was hired to play in the band backing Aretha Franklin at then-Oakland Coliseum. It felt like the peak in a musical career that was just getting going, and the emotions took Navarrette by surprise. 

"That just kind of shook my world," Navarrette remembered, "because when it was over with, it was so heavy I was like what do you do after that?" 

Sitting in his girlfriend's backyard in Oakland, an intense looks crossed Navarrette's face when he talked about the impact of the pandemic, as if walking through a cemetery surveying its ghosts. It was an expression of mourning as he reflected on the pandemic's absence of musical camaraderie, the sensation of gathering on a stage with other musicians to play, not to mention the financial toll of losing all his gigs and main source of income. It's no surprise Navarrette has since wrung every molecule from his post-pandemic opportunities. 

"Getting through the pandemic we could kind of see it as almost as a blessing," Navarrette said. "We have second chance to not waste time." 

Once many of the pandemic restrictions lifted, Navarrette began organizing concerts - including one on Oakland's waterfront featuring many of his musical heroes playing the Cuban songs he'd grown to love. But instead of playing as a sideman, he was now the bandleader.

"He’s still this young guy and he’s got that energy and he’s got the spirit," said violinist Anthony Blea. "It’s nice to see him come into more of like a leadership role as a musician." 

The post-pandemic life also found Navarrette visitings elementary schools in the East Bay to teach the music with which he's surrounded himself. His students learned to play congas but also to singing ceremonial parts. 

"I’ve had the opportunity to teach kindergarten through elementary school," Navarrette said, "all the music that I’ve learned from my travels from the Bay Area to Cuba to Brazil." 

To Blea, it's the gesture of a musician taking the next step -- and in a way answering the question Navarrette posed to himself after sharing the stage with Franklin, "what do you do after that?" 

"The tradition can be lost," Blea said, "so it’s important for someone like Javier to keep educating the public and the kids." 

For Navarrette, who's older brother is New York-based trombonist Raul Navarrette, music and family have always been at life's core -- becoming even more precious once the pandemic temporarily took them away. In Fresno, where rampant gang violence consistently earned it a place on the list of the nation's most dangerous cities, music was salvation. 

"For me," Navarrette said, "it was music that saved me and my brother from getting involved into drugs or gangs or just getting in trouble." 

And now, what feels like a lifetime later - as the world bursts out of its semi-hibernation - Navarrette once again finds himself on the stage with a band cooking around him, and the pulse pushing him toward some sort of musical bliss. 

"It’s a feeling of heaven," Navarrette said, "because there are no worries when it gets to that point."