Randall Radic

Gifted musician and spoken word artist Martin Graff unveils the music video for “Sativa,” a track lifted from his recent album, Trips for Piano. A finalist for Best Classical Artist in the 2022 DC Wammie Awards, Martin Graff’s music is pure beauty.

Trips for Piano chronicles Martin Graff’s return to music, as well as his renewed creativity expressing itself through liberation and joy. For almost 17 years, Martin isolated himself from music, the result of the overwhelming potency of passion and creativity.

At the age of four, Martin sat at a piano and knew that he and the piano were “meant to be.” Yet creativity requires a type of cautionary care or else it can engulf. After years of separation from a state of flow, Martin rekindled the feeling he experienced during his love-at-first-sight encounter with the instrument, a feeling he recognized had never really left him.

Trips for Piano is meant to remind us that the essence of creativity is always there, we can always fall back on it.

Martin believes that artistry belongs to all people, whether they identify as artists or not. From his perspective, his music only achieves vitality when listeners bring their own personal narrative arc to the experience.

Sativa is a subspecies of cannabis known for its invigorating, activating effects that alleviate anxiety and stress while augmenting creativity and focus.

“Sativa” opens on an elegant, trickling piano flowing into exquisite filaments of color, rippling tones, and graceful leitmotifs. The feel and flow of the tune is at once gorgeous and meditative, allowing listeners time and space to probe their innermost thoughts and feelings.

Martin’s technique is not only superb, but evocative, summoning up gentle, misty coloration and soft, shimmering reflections.

Amalgamated with the alluring music, the video provides magnificent images of the serene beauty of the natural world.

Wow! “Sativa” is wonderfully wrought, a superlative work of art.

—RR, March 15, 2022

Randy Radic is a Left Coast author, writer, and editor who contributes to Ozy.com, BlogCritics.org, AND Magazine, and Pop Off. He writes true crime under the pen name of John Lee Brook, and his books have been published by ECW Press, Headpress, and Trine Day.