AC Discussion | Voicings: Value Creation and Collaboration
On May 17th, Mary Elizabeth Lawson and Anna McClellan sat down with Dereck Higgins, Jacoby, Keiria Marsha, and Ameen Wahba to talk about how collaborative performance practices build communities and model new paradigms of “value” and “worth.” The wide ranging discussion, specifically attuned to Omaha’s music scene, also offered possibilities for working together to cultivate a cultural commons rooted in solidarity.
Read through the transcript of the full conversation below, and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Title of Discussion: Voicings: Value Creation and Collaboration
Panelist 1: Dereck Higgins
Panelist 2: Jacoby
Panelist 3: Keiria Marsha
Panelist 4: Ameen Wahba
Moderators: Mary Elizabeth Lawson and Anna McClellan
Date of Discussion: May 17th, 2023
List of Acronyms: [DH] = Dereck Higgins; [J] = Jacoby; [KM] = Keiria Marsha; [AW] = Ameen Wahba; [MEL] = Mary Elizabeth Lawson; [AM] = Anna McClellan; [PF] = Peter Fankhauser
Transcript
[PF] Hi everybody. Welcome. We’re happy to see you all here tonight. My name is Peter and I'm one of Amplify’s co-directors. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Amplify, were an incubator for just and equitable futures in the arts and Alternate Currents one of our cornerstone programs that includes a Working Group of ten artists, cultural workers, organizers who get together every month to share their creative research with one another, most of which focuses responses to national and international issues in the arts that have real impacts at the local level. Those monthly meetings are further contextualized during this bi-monthly discussion series and on the Alternate Currents blog. Mary Lawson, who is in the co-moderator chair tonight, alongside Anna McClellan, is a member of our 2023 Alternate Currents Working Group. We're also joined by Jacoby, Keiria Marsha, Dereck Higgins, and Ameen Wahba.
We want to say a big thank you to the Sherwood Foundation, Nebraska Arts Council and Nebraska Cultural Endowment whose support makes programs like Alternate Currents possible and thank you to Millwork Commons who have been such great and generous partners in lending us space. Thank you all again for being here and participating in critical discussions like this and with that, I’ll turn it over to Mary and Anna.
[MEL] Hi, everyone. I’m Mary Lawson. Thank you for being here. Before we jump into the discussion with the panelists, I'm going to read through a couple of notes that Anna and I put together in preparation for this panel. Just to give you background and context for this discussion, because it's been an ongoing discussion for a lot of musicians and performers and artists of different disciplines over the last few years.
We began meeting in 2020 as a collective called Music Coalition Stand Out. We met often over the course of six months at each other's homes and virtually. Collectively, we had a lot of questions about how our local music performance scene wasn't meeting our needs and dreams for what it could be. Fast forward to 2022: I as awarded a Populus Grant through the Union for Contemporary Art and was able to support the continuation of this conversation, and many others like it, with the money from the grant. In March of this year, Anna and I facilitated a community dialogue at Blue Line Coffee Shop where we worked to make space for working artists of all disciplines to share their experiences and help us collectively push forward.
Toward the end of this community dialogue in March, we sat with a lot of big, complicated questions around collective harm and responsibility. Anna and I are both interested in doing that again and want to say that these conversations have been more informal and open. It's great to have the support from an established organizations like Amplify and the Union, but we want to continue this work even if there isn't an arts organization hosting us. I want to highlight that this conversation is open to any and all who are interested in change on a deep level. When I think of what that means, I'm thinking of feelings, emotions, memories, and experiences. The panel is the next iteration of that dialogue which has centered vulnerable and raw experiences that help shed light on what is not working in the scene, questioning collective harms, asking who's responsible for making amends, and what we want to experience in our individual and collective practices. How do we help each other access resources, share space, and leave certain things behind us.
[AM] Hi, everyone, I'm Anna McClellan and like Mary said, we've been this conversation for a while already and I think we’re continuing to home in on some of the issues Mary mentioned tonight like collaboration, value creation, access to experimentation, and building an audience of listeners. When we were preparing for this discussion, I thought a lot about the idea of attention as a common thread, or the idea that attention is a resource, attention as currency. What if attention was our form of exchange, the thing we gave each other? I wrote, “I give you my attention in exchange for yours. I give you my wholeness in exchange for your wholeness. When we stop giving attention to things, they lose their power.” I am thinking about this an artist, and I'm also thinking about it from a revolutionary standpoint. If we got together and collectively decided to put our attention in one direction, well, I think that could make waves. I'm still trying to wrap my head around exactly where this discussion could go, so let’s just get into it. I’m going to ask our panelists to introduce themselves and talk about how have they’ve felt seen in the scene. I want to ask each of you if you’ve had an experience while sharing your work when you felt like your time energy and was valued, and your sense of worth was reflected back to you?
[AW] Hi, my name is Ameen, he/him pronouns. I’m an artist and therapist. I've had those moments where I felt validated as an artist. I've definitely had those experiences and thinking about the theme of attention, I have noticed that when I received positive attention, I gravitated toward the people showing it because they must share, I don't know, an opinion or belief about what art we think is interesting. I think sometimes I’ve struggled to find community, but when I have found community, it's been through acknowledging validation from others and showing that validation to others when I've been excited about their work. That feels natural.
[AM] Can you think of a specific performance or a show that you played when you thought, this is it, this is what I want us to chase?
[AW] Those are mostly micro moments for me. They’re usually a word and a smile or engagements with certain people, as opposed to an event. I unfortunately can think of a lot of events I’ve experienced where I've felt like, “Why did I engage in this?”.
[DH] Hello, my name is Dereck Higgins. I’m a musician, multi-instrumentalist, and I'm a bit older than my fellow panelists. I'll be sixty-eight in a couple of months, so I remember growing up in the sixties and seventies, both my parents were musicians. It was the birth of rock-and-roll and youth culture. Music was super special; it was the thing. As time has gone on, as technology has advanced, we have a lot more choices. We have computers, we have games, we have a plethora of choices, and it’s changed the way our collective attention is focused. Like, for example, when the Beatles happened, well, that can't happen again. Michael Jackson can’t happen again. Now we have multiple Beatles and Michael Jacksons. So, the idea of attention as currency is a powerful thought. I think it's quite a challenge these days, because like I said, we have so many choices, it's really easy to lose focus, or shift attention.
I have definitely had experiences when I felt my art was validated. I've always identified as an outsider: first as an African American, in racist Nebraska, and then in general, as a person. When punk started to explode, and I was part of the beginning of it, and literally the only black person in the scene for a long time with all these other misfits and street kids coming to shows I was playing, I thought, “These are my people.” We're outsiders who have found each other through the power of this music and this collective experience, you know, moshing and losing your mind. I'm thankful for that experience because a lot of the time, you’re performing, and you don't know if you're connecting at all.
I played at Noise Fest at Project Project this weekend and it was amazing. It was like, “Oh, there’s a new scene here; look at all these kids; look at all these people playing this non-music.” Honestly, I was one of the first forty years ago to do multimedia with sound and art. So, to see the next wave is very encouraging to me. The thing that I liked about it, compared to other parts of the world where I’ve played, was that the level of attention the audience was giving to performers was so elevated. As a result, I left there feeling like I was part of this. Attention is a very valuable currency. I don't know that we alone as artists can be responsible for raising the bar there. I think it's a shared thing and when we have these positive experiences, we share it with others.
[KM] That's a tough act to follow. Well, my name is Keiria Marsha. I'm a singer, songwriter, recording artist, newfound actor. I just got done with Little Shop of Horrors at the Omaha Community Playhouse. I’m also a community organizer and event curator, and I guess I can say I’ve struggled in this scene, especially with bookings. I have a lot of singer friends and back in 2021, they were all getting booked. I was like the only one that wasn't getting booked. I've done headliner shows, I've put together shows, and I was just like, “What's happening? Why am I not getting booked?” So, I ended up starting my own thing instead: the Pull Up and Vibe Open Mic Music Festival. I thought I would do one and see how it turned out, but I ended up having over thirty thirty-five artists sign up. I got a platform stage and I some chairs and set them out in this field at the Healing Roots Garden, and it ended up being a big success. After that, Spark and Fabric Lab reached out and wanted to work with me on more open mics, an open mic series. That gave me the opportunity to work with more artists pay performers and feel validated in a space I helped to create. I'm thirty-seven. I've been doing this music stuff for a while. Sometimes I get a little discouraged because it's hard to find that value in it but if attention was currency, I would be rich right now. I love that that you put that together in that way.
[J] Hello. My name is Jacoby. He/him pronouns. I’m also a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in writing, singing, and performance. The places where I felt most seen within the artist community are independently run spaces, house shows, and things of that nature where people will come together to make art, really for each other. I think working in those spaces allowed me to be not very good, or to or not very certain or not very confident, and to present unfinished work, or things that I was developing and get feedback that pushed me to continue. And so those spaces, I think, are where I felt the most validated. When I stepped out of that, and moved into performing in public spaces, like bars or venues and someone's like, “Oh, what are you playing?” And I'm like, “I don't play anything.” Their eyes start to glaze over and they probably think I don't have the discipline that an artist should have, or whatever it is. Recently though, I've performed a few shows, one here in Omaha at Reverb, where I felt very seen and validated. And I think that attention, especially from peers and other artists in the community, is necessary sometimes to sustain the energy that it takes to maintain being an artist.
[DH] Do you feel it's a challenge to gather a community of people like minded who are interested in your work? Am I asking that the right way? Like I said, for me, punk rock was a community brought together mainly by the music. Do you feel that’s something you’re still looking for?
[AM] Since having these conversations, I've noticed changes. Having been in the scene for ten plus years, at time, I’ve felt like audiences have been really checked out and kind of listless. And I think that’s because the scene has been so homogenized, which I feel like is hopefully changing.
[KM] I think it’s also about relating to your audience. I'm not a big social media person. People can’t learn much about me through my social media. But once I started hosting the open mic series, and saw the same people come through every week, every month, I got to know them, and they got to know me, in a different way. There’s a community now, a group of people that I know will be at every Pull Up and Vibe. So, it's about being relatable and finding a balance with how much of ourselves we give away to social media and marketing.
[Audience Member] I was interested in what Jacoby said about independent spaces. I was born and raised in the UK and a lot of the shows I went to as a kid, people would purposefully leave their front doors open, or leave their gates open, or shows would happen in corner shops spaces where people just happen to be. In America, everything is so spread out and Americans kind of mind their own business a little too much. I feel like having independent, artist-run spaces that are physically accessible is important. That was one thing that was cool about Noise Fest. I just happened to be in the neighborhood and found it and it was was free. There’s a balance to strike too between having a space that’s independent and arts-led, but also welcoming, open, and accessible.
[Audience Member] Just a couple notes. I started going to shows in the mid-eighties and back then, it really was a collective of people. You went to be part of a community and that’s something I think you’re all striving for. In Omaha, I think it has a lot to do with the venues and the fact that for so long we’ve relied on bars. I think we’re going to have to break away from that.
[MEL] Such good points. I feel like so much of that energy, that spirit, I experienced a lot in Lincoln as a musician and performer--open doors, house shows every week, and like Jacoby was saying, a built-in community. I experienced a sense of belonging pretty quickly. And I feel like post-pandemic it has been difficult to regain that sense of community and intimacy because we were physically cut off from each other for so long.
[DH] So then, perhaps one of the possible outcomes of this conversation is that we create a collective experience where we all perform together and try to bring people together?
[AW] I want to speak to that and reference another comment you made at the same time, Derreck. You mentioned that people in the punk scene came together mostly for the music, whereas I feel with this group, the Music Coalition, we came together around shared values rather than a shared aesthetic or discipline. I think that's been true with all the people I've wanted to engage with. It's more about shared values and being interested in each other's work, and less so about a particular scene. Another shout out to Noise Fest, we're all just like talking about Noise, but it is unique for this moment, in that it was about a particular genre. And perhaps there are naturally shared values in that too.
Also, I'd love to do some collaborative thing.
[DH] Maybe this conversation can actually create an event and propagate the kind of change we want to see, though I'm not sure we've stated what exactly that is.
[J] Before we get there, I want to respond to something that you shared from the audience, which might lead us into talking more about the kind of change we want to see. As a performer, the spaces and venues that are available, are incredibly alcohol centric. So, what does that mean when we think about how community forms and how people engage with performance? I think sometimes the danger of introducing a substance into a community as its central focus, instead of the artistic expression or shared values, is that you give power to it and those spaces in a way that skews who gets bookings and how bookings are made and the intention behind that.
[AW] I will echo that. In my mind, the autonomy of space has always felt primary to an authentic community, but, by their nature, independent artist-run spaces have their moment and then, they’re gone due to lack of funding, or organizational support. So, how we make those spaces sustainable is something I'm really interested in.
[AM] Right. Venues run on corporate a model. They prioritize artists who bring in the most people so they can sell the most alcohol. I want to prioritize our relationship to the audience and the attention we give and get back, not how much money we’re bringing into the venue. We put so much time and energy into making this music, the connection that comes out of it should be valued.
[MEL] I think something I've been bumping up against, and this is maybe another space for change, is that we find ourselves doing a lot of administrative and organizing work, so much so that we don't have a lot of time to create, because we're doing the programming. How do we participate in the work of community building and still have time to devote to making music?
[KM] That rings true for me. For Pull Up and Vibe, I don't have a team behind me. And so when I curate events, I struggle to find that balance. I have an event coming called Melanin City Classics and I've already missed two to three months of planning, because I was in production, and rehearsals for Little Shop of Horrors. So, it’s like playing catch up all the time. You start beating yourself up. I haven't recorded any new music and that’s what I love. I love to write. I haven't had any writing sessions because I'm so busy and focused on the business of everything instead of the creative side, dealing with venues and favoritism. I don't want to name names or anything, but there are venues where some people will not get booked no matter how much work they’re doing.
[AW] Right. Some people are included, and some people are inherently excluded. That brings up this question of what is the difference between a clique and a community? It feels really complicated and messy in this city. It also underscores this expectation here that if you want to be an artist, you have to build spaces for yourself and scrounge to find where you fit in. People will often say, “Why don't you move to Chicago, or LA, or even Minneapolis?” And this is an internal conflict for a lot of folks I've talked to both within the music scene outside the music scene here. There’s this question of, are there opportunities here for me to do to ground into what I want to do as opposed to be split and spread trying to do that, and this other thing?
[KM] Right. A lot of people come to me and say, “You're too talented for Omaha. Why are you still here? You should move to another city.” But that encourages me to stay when they say that. It's like, I could take my talents to another city where I’d be competing with 1000 girls with lace front wigs and fake bodies, or I could stay here and work with people like you guys and build up a community. There is worth in that.
[DH] I think we have to do it ourselves. I hear what you’re saying. As an organizer, as an artist organizer, you are doing everything. And yet really, in some ways, there are no other choices to get it rolling. It sounds like if anything can happen here, it’s maybe more pooling of resources, perhaps. I'm not really concerned about community becasue I've been at this so long. I make myself welcome. It’s not up to ya’ll, okay. I feel like it's up to us to take the bull by the horns and start something.
[AW] But, if we're putting something together, and we have the planning committee right here, we’re the planning committee, are we also the artists? Do we want to be the artists? I think that's the struggle. Because I want to fest with all of us.
[DH] Well, I've been doing this for so long and as a Black man in Nebraska whose literally almost been killed at shows--I was in a band back in seventies playing out in Millard, Full Clip, one of the first hard rock bands with a Black man in it. We were on stage and my brother was out in the audience with his white girlfriend. Next thing I know, they disappeared. Then, a bunch of people come up on stage and hustle us off. The other band members pull their guns out of their cases and say your brother and his girl just got their asses kicked outside, let's get out of here. So, what I'm trying to say is I have dealt with so much bullshit, I opened the door for myself. We need to open the door for ourselves. We need to create it. That's what I say.
[MEL] I think you’re absolutely right about that. We figure out what we value about our work and in our practices and then we ultimately have to open the door for other people to see that too.
[KM] Exactly. I don't know if anybody watches Love & Hip Hop, but they create those spaces and the parties and events. We have to create those moments and those spaces, so Omaha is just as appealing as LA and Minneapolis but with different people in different rooms.
[Audience Member] Hi, I’m Alex. I also have some thoughts about attention and the idea of attention as currency. I think that’s a really powerful idea, but I’m also sensing there are cons to seeing it that way. If attention is seen as a resource, then it becomes subject to scarcity mentality and the same sort of supply and demand economics. So, in that sense, it’s another function of capitalism where some people win, and some people have to lose. So, I’m trying to reframe how I think of attention, like maybe to attend to or wait for. Or attention as an action or activity that generous and self-regenerating in a way that forms community rather than cliques. Otherwise, I feel like it’s Instagram infinite scroll all over again for artists.
[AM] That's a really good point I've been struggling with myself. It’s difficult to think about things outside of the context of capitalism. That’s what I wanted to test with my thought experiment imagining attention as currency. Could it be a completely different system? I don’t know. Those pitfalls you bring up are definitely part of the experiment.
[Audience Member] The way I’ve heard decentralized models of leadership described, like circle structures, you have designated leaders on specific topics because some people have more expertise or experience in certain areas. So, you have to recognize who has the most experience and expertise in that moment. I think that ties in here with the idea of attention’s relationship to performance as well. Like, who is saying the most relevant things? Which idea deserves our attention in this moment? And how can we direct attention to that idea, not the person, but the idea and build community in that way?
[ML] Yeah, removing the ego form community building. Thank you for sharing that.
I don't want to speak for all of us in this space, but since we've talked about social media and where our attention goes, I feel like we give too much power to what's happening online or elsewhere and not so much to what’s happening here, locally, on the ground.
Let me ask, for our panelists here, what does collaboration mean to you? How does collaboration sharpen your artistic practice and tune into what’s happening on the ground?
[KM] For me, community is everything. Being able to build community through collaboration means the world. I don't know how to explain it. It shows up in my artistic practice, mainly, when I'm doing Pull Up and Vibe or hosting an open mic. I've had good experiences, and I've had bad experiences, but I only want to speak to the good because I want to keep everybody in a positive mood. I've met all kinds of people that have helped me move forward, not only in my artistic practice, but also as a person, as a woman. I feel like that all ties together for me.
[DH] Collaboration makes us grow. That's where that's at. Collaboration is essential.
[AW] This is an interesting question or series of questions, because growing up music was a very private and isolated thing for me and was a way to work through my own experience. I've learned, I've had to learn, how to collaborate. And it's been very valuable, but something I sometimes have to push myself to do. I think it’s in that struggle where I find great connections and great value. I feel like collaborating, even outside of music, with other folks who work in different ways enriches my life.
[J] I'm going to try to formulate these thoughts as succinctly as possible. I've only recently been interested in collaboration. My artistic process has also been mostly private and isolated and kind of self-reflective. But taking inspiration from conversation like this, from the excellence I see in other artists and wanting to reflect that in my creative work, I feel like lately I've been able to write with people and record with other people. And some of those experiences have been weird. Sometimes people present artistic collaboration as the guise for other interests maybe sexual, maybe platonic and that's a whole different conversation, right? But when someone says, “I see the work that you do, and it speaks to me, and I want or work to make sense together,” I’m able to let go of controlling of every aspect of the narrative of me and my artistic expression, and allow other people to remind me that, it's great to be an artist, and it's nice to have a talent, or whatever, but if I'm standing in a room twirling alone isn’t the same as when we are twirling together. It’s been nice to find people who respect you as a person with something to express, something to say something who you can work through ideas together with. And it doesn't have to be perfect. I think that I need more of that.
[AM] With that, we’re going to end this part of the discussion but that doesn’t mean we stop talking. So, let’s keep talking! Thank you everyone for being here and participating in the conversation and have a great night.
*This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
About the Panelists:
Dereck Higgins is a self-taught music maker. Multi-instrumentalist primarily known as a bass player. Experience playing everything from classic rock to reggae to punk to jazz to electronic to improvisation and more. Dedicated to the moment of music making, listening to allow the music to speak. Big record collector as well. Inducted into the Nebraska Music Hall of Fame. Three time OEAA winner, multiple nominations. Had a show segment (Higgs Corner) on Adult Swim for 5 years. Some bands past and present: David Nance Mowed Sound, Digital Sex, Son Ambulance, RAF, 3gypt, Skuddur, Hotlines, InDreama, Chemicals, Norman & The Rockwells, Icky Blossoms, Hotlines, Norman & The Rockwells and many more. Has toured the USA, Europe and Japan. He has performed on stage with Mark Burgess (The Chameleons UK), Tatsuya Nakatani, Soul Asylum, Toxic Reasons, Preston Love and many others. Dereck also does visual art, specifically collage and has had exhibits.
Jacoby is a multifaceted artist - a singer, writer, producer, dancer, and more - based in Lincoln, NE, who uses art as a vehicle to explore humanity, express emotion, enter conversation, and celebrate life. Through performance he encourages spaces for thought, joy, healing and discomfort.
Keiria Marsha Lowe, known professionally as Keiria Marsha, is an American R&B singer/songwriter , from Omaha Nebraska. Keiria grew up with a visionary mind. She grew up creating music, art, visuals, writing and recording. She started performing on stages as young as four years old. Keiria’s passion for music, art, and social justice led to the creation of CCVisions (Collaborative Creative Visions). Through CCVisions, Keiria Marsha has created events such as Pull Up and Vibe Music Festival, Pull Up and Vibe Open Mic Series, Pull Up and Vibe Podcast, Melanin City Classics and etc. A native to North Omaha, Keiria prioritizes outreach work in her community through volunteering with different organizations such as Elks Lodge, FABRIC Lab, The Black Agenda Alliance, and many others.
Keiria also sits on the boards for the Healing Roots Garden and Our Light Inc programs and participates as a Landbank ambassador. Keiria is extremely excited to be making her debut performance at the Omaha Community Playhouse theater in the show The Little Shop of Horrors. “I love to connect with my audience in a way thats sends them home happy & inspired.” Keiria has a forever growing love to send good vibrations through her music while also sending positive messages. Keiria stands firmly on following your dreams, there will always be eyes and ears to see and to hear.
Ameen Wahba is a multidisciplinary artist and therapist from Omaha, NE. Primarily working in sound and music, he has also experimented within curating, installation, video, and culture work initiatives. He is currently an Inside/Outside fellow at The Union for Contemporary Art.
About the Moderators:
Mary Elizabeth Lawson is a musician, singer of songs, and writer based in the Midwest. She performs under the stage name, Mesonjixx. Alongside music and performance Mary works in arts and culture as an independent contractor and grassroots organizer. She is interested in building new worlds with artists and destroying systems of supremacy and hierarchy – not only in the world around her but also her inner world. She believes that we all are worthy of having our needs met, and that we don’t have to die trying to meet them.
Anna McClellan is a songwriter born and based in Omaha, NE. She records and releases music under her given name. She is currently in school to become an electrician, teaches piano lessons part time and works at a coffee shop. Forever interested in getting closer and closer to the hearts of matters, examination and excavation of self are central to her work.