MARCA CASSITY
Blending electronic rock with Native influences, Marca's music amplifies healing, resilience, and identity.
Description of Art
(Album Cover 2Sacred: photo by Josue Rivas). During the pandemic lockdown, Cassity was working as a trauma therapist for Native American and LGBTQ+ clients when they read that 33% of Native American LGBTQ+ youth attempted suicide in 2020. While initially stunned by that number, it ended up serving as inspiration for the album 2Sacred. Having been one of those youth, Cassity wanted to share their story to help people feel less alone and more confident in authentically expressing who they are. “After hearing that disturbing statistic, my mission for creating this project was born: If I can make art that even one queer or trans person hears, or sees, and they stay alive and love themselves and their identity more because of it, mission accomplished.” The result is Cassity’s fourth studio album, 2Sacred a collection of 10 songs. The album was funded by the NDN Collective Radical Imagination grant, as well as the Osage Nation Foundation artist grant. The album explores themes of what it means to be Two-Spirit – a LGBTQ+ person with Native American heritage – and one who has learned to love and accept themselves and pursue art as an act of devotion and decolonization. For this highly vulnerable material Cassity was grateful and proud to work with Wolf Carr for vocal production at The Hallowed Halls Studio alongside engineer Justin Phelps who created an environment of safety and groundedness, both as solid allies to a Native American/ Indigiqueer artist.
Artist Biography
Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer artist Marca Cassity (Osage/Kaw) delivers inspired synth-driven electronic rock songs with Native nuances, that speak to overcoming hardship through resilience, in connection to nature, humor, love, compassion, spirituality, and heritage. Guided by spirit, ancestors, and on a mission to help people embrace their identity, Cassity is constantly exploring and evolving as an artist and a person. Called “a songwriter to be reckoned with” by No Depression, for the 2Sacred album project Marca added an X gender marker to their given name to become Marx, in honor of gender diversity which has existed throughout all of history.
