Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer artist Marx 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, they’ve recently added an X to their given name Marca, in honor of gender diversity which has existed throughout all of history.

Cassity is an enrolled citizen of the Osage Nation, with Kaw, Saponi, Susquehannock, as well as French, Scottish-Irish, Irish, English, and German heritage. They are named for their Osage Congressman grandfather Mark Freeman, Jr. and grew up on the Osage reservation on the land of their great-grandmother, original allottee Grace Lessert Freeman who taught them a love of playing piano. Drawn to the instrument from a very young age, they ended up studying classical piano all the way to college, playing french horn in their high school band, while surviving closeted queerness in the bible belt in the era of the AIDS Crisis by spinning vinyl records of artists such as Queen, Pat Benatar, Eurythmics, David Bowie, and Prince.

Happily labeled a tomboy in the 1970s, Cassity ran around barefoot in the dirt, recording the sounds of thunder on a cassette tape recorder.  However, coming out as queer in the late 1980s didn’t go as well, leading them to drop out of music school to become a nurse in the AIDS crisis, and ultimately a trauma therapist specializing in Native and 2SLGBTQ+ resilience. 

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 their forthcoming album 2Sacred. Having been one of those youth, Marx 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 two Native American non-profits , 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 Marx 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.