MARZ Dreams
Mixtapes from Humboldt County’s emerging artists and musicians
by Gabrielle Gopinath, Ink People Center for the Arts
While Eureka, located on the coast some 270 miles north of San Francisco, was once dubbed “Queen City of the Ultimate West” in reference to its remote geographic location, the diversity of the experiences of its young residents underscores how wired it now is to the rest of the globe.
The MARZ Project Media Lab, a core project of Ink People Center for the Arts, was established in Eureka in 1997 as a free media and arts production program providing underserved young people ages 12 to 26 with the tools to express themselves creatively through visual art, poetry, and audio and video production. MARZ offers instruction, mentorship, and support with a specific focus on the needs and interests of emerging artists.
The breadth of these emerging artists’ creative influences is striking. Selections ranging from mainstream pop hits to deep cuts from the regional underground shed light on MARZ artists’ hopes, dreams, and fears for the future, as well as the challenges they contend with in the here and now. These include poverty, disability, homelessness, and addiction — all factors exacerbated by the pandemic in recent months.
The breadth of these emerging artists’ creative influences is striking. Selections ranging from mainstream pop hits to deep cuts from the regional underground shed light on MARZ artists’ hopes, dreams, and fears for the future, as well as the challenges they contend with in the here and now. These include poverty, disability, homelessness, and addiction — all factors exacerbated by the pandemic in recent months.
“The first music that really inspired me was an album called God Help the Girl,” Elaine George said. That 2009 album, by Stuart Murdoch of the Scottish indie pop band Belle and Sebastian, “was basically about a girl who was hospitalized and then ran away and started making music.” George, a poet and musician, made a mix including tracks by her current favorite musicians, Sacramento-based indie rockers Cake and singer-songwriter Melanie Martinez of Queens, New York. She is currently recording her first album with MARZ producer Cory Goldman under the name Candy Wife.
Jeff Tuck takes photographs and makes experimental hip-hop tracks under the name Socket 7. His tastes in literature run to classic 20th-century dystopias: His mix includes shoutouts to George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World, and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, in addition to American hip-hop producer Blockhead’s album The Music Scene. He is working toward a degree in psychology.
The artist known as DrinkingMoonlight, a trap / R&B producer, artist, and audio engineer, fuses elements from electronic and world music to create unique melodic and bass-driven tracks, some of which feature his vocals. His mix delves into the contemporary R&B underground with tracks like “Cooking Up” by Zaytoven, “Drugs You Should Try” by Travi$ Scott, and “This Woman’s Work” by Zacari, featuring Che Ecru.
Louie Lingard, a recording artist from Eureka, shares music, memes, and comic videos under the name NotLewy on his TikTok account, where he has amassed almost five hundred thousand followers. “I suffer from a multitude of disabilities and use my music as a way of dealing with my problems,” he said. His musical reference points include the albums Blue Hour by Los Angeles-based indie band Ruby Haunt, Starz by Swedish cloud-rap pioneer Yung Lean, and Minnesotan songwriter Corbin’s Mourn, a concept album about a protagonist who builds a bunker for himself and his lover to survive the apocalypse.
“I suffer from a multitude of disabilities and use my music as a way of dealing with my problems.”
Louie Lingard
NotLewy
NotLewy videos are short, profane, and often very funny, so steeped in absurdist pop culture references that the mere act of describing them tends to elicit giggles. “Dababy Live in Concert From Da Baby Isle” features Lingard and a couple of masked collaborators playing the music of North Carolina-born rapper DaBaby on toy keyboards in the baby aisle of a big-box store, intercut with a shot of the artist languidly dancing the Nae Nae, while off camera an authoritative female voice enunciates the past participle, “I shat.”
The NotLewy TikTok feed offers a memorable portrayal of the challenges inherent in navigating young adulthood with a disability. At the same time it provides a document of millennial adolescence whose broad contours will be familiar to anyone who grew up in late 20th or 21st century America, bearing witness to the weirdness of this place where shared reference points run the gamut from far away (K-Pop supergroup BTS) to close at hand (T.J. Maxx).
“I’m excited for the opportunity to showcase the varied interests of our students,” MARZ audio mentor Cory Goldman said. “We’re often very goal-oriented when we are working, so it’s nice to take the time for all of us to learn a bit more about each other and our influences. I hope others discover interesting work, and that this project will forge new connections between like-minded artists!”
EXPERIENCE
MARZ Dreams Mixtapes
www.inkpeople.org/marzprojectMARZ mentors and students have been staying in touch throughout the COVID-19 pandemic by creating “mixtapes” — not literal cassettes, but curated compilations of the musical tracks, websites, poems, comic routines, novels, and artworks that have inspired them during a period in which meeting face to face has, for the most part, not been possible.
These mixes are now posted online as part of the interactive project MARZ Dreams. Visitors to the MARZ website can click on different selections to access a unique array of audiovisual references, hearing songs and watching videos that have shaped each artist’s worldview.
The Ink People has been changing lives since 1979 by connecting the community with resources for cultural development. Support from the California Arts Council has bolstered that effort since its early beginnings, awarding the organization its first grant in 1985.
ABOUT INK PEOPLE CENTER FOR THE ARTS
The Ink People, founded in 1979, is a community-based arts and cultural organization with over 400 members, providing programs and services to create vibrant and visionary tools for community cultural development, and to weave the arts into the fabric of the community.
Learn more at www.inkpeopleorg/marzproject.
DREAM is California’s newest arts and culture magazine, published by the California Arts Council, the state’s arts agency.
The annual publication features voices and stories from across the state, sharing a glimpse into the depth of impact of creativity and cultural expression in a region as large and diverse as California. The premier issue explores what it means to dream, introducing artists and culture bearers from communities throughout the state.
Visit www.arts.ca.gov/dream for more information.
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