Nostalgia For Ditmas Park: Cellist Marika Hughes Ponders The Future

If you listen to Marika Hughes’ latest CD “New York Nostalgia,” you are likely to find the songs infectious, seductive, and distinctive in a way you can’t quite put your finger on. But if you go to see the Ditmas Park musician perform, the mystery will quickly unravel. Hughes is a cellist, as well as a vocalist, and the inclusion of that addition to the bass, drums and keyboards line-up of so many modern bands is a delightful difference.

Hughes is the granddaughter of Emanuel Feuermann, one of the most celebrated cellists of the 20th century, and her parents ran a jazz club on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She grew up there, starting her classical music studies (on the violin) when she was just three years old. Eventually, she settled in Ditmas Park, where she makes music that mixes those disparate traditions in compelling ways.

On the eve of a CD launch party performance with her band Bottom Heavy at Joe’s Pub on Monday (3/14), Hughes sat down with the Ditmas Park Corner to talk about “New York Nostalgia,” her music, and our neighborhood.

Have you had the chance to play the material from the new CD live before?

We have; I sort of do things backwards. This material has been played live quite often, and then we went into the studio to record it. We are rearranging things for this show just to keep it exciting for us.

Do you find that having a string section as an integral part of the band allows you to do things listeners don’t find in a lot of contemporary music?

That’s an interesting question, because I think in the past 15 or 20 years, strings have become much more commonplace in popular music across all kinds of genres, but I grew up playing string quartets. I always wanted to be in a string quartet growing up so my inclination is always to play with some kind of string player, like violin or viola.

The violinist in the band, Charlie Burnham, is one of my all-time musical and personal heroes. I don’t even think of him as a violinist. It’s just the sound of Charlie Burnham. He is integral to the sound of this project for sure. Absolutely.

“New York Nostalgia” is an eclectic collection—you’ve mentioned 90s rock and jazz as influences on the album–but the material consistently showcases your classical training. You are quite deft in finding places for that tradition in styles familiar to pop music fans. Do you find yourself listening to music on the radio and thinking, “Wow, a cello would sound really sweet right there?”

I do, I do. On the radio, and pop music, all kinds of music, I hear things and I think, “Oh, I would like to play with them. I hear something I can add to that.”

And then actually the inverse, sometimes the cello has become—Nirvana really put the cello on the map in terms of pop and rock music. I mean other people used the cello before, but they really popularized that sound in the 90s and sometimes it’s even been overused.

I knew there was a “cello rock” tradition, but I only recently learned that “cello metal” was a thing, though you must be quite familiar with that, since you recorded with Lou Reed and Metallica on their “Lulu” collaboration.

Well actually, that was funny. They didn’t require me to distort my sound. They may have distorted it after I was there, but when I was there it was a very straightforward cello sound.

Metal is not a place where I’ve spent a lot of time and know much about, but there have been times in my career and life when that’s been asked of me. It’s always very fun because I’m not so familiar with music pedals distorting my sound. And when I have, it’s very strange because the sound is so different. I play differently. That’s always really intriguing and interesting.

You’ve done quite a bit of session work for other musicians, including Third Eye Blind, Mr. Bungle, Yo Yo Ma, Harry Belafonte, and Ani DiFranco. That’s quite a list, and it only scratches the surface of your discography. What are people looking for when they bring you into a project?

It can be anything. As a cellist, often I’m hired to act as a bass player in a band. Which I love. I think I have the soul of a bass player.

You grew up on the Upper West Side and moved to Brooklyn years ago to be near work and friends. And you told the story on a Moth podcast of how a gruesome turn of events inspired the search that led to your current home in Ditmas Park. On moving in, you felt, with great relief “This is where I can live.” Has the neighborhood fulfilled that promise for you?

Absolutely. Because we grew up in buildings. And I was apprehensive at first to live in a place where there were houses and yards and driveways, and I was like “Where am I?” And it was within minutes, or seconds, that I felt this incredible relief to be able to come home to this peaceful environment, a little bit away from the fray, but very easy to get back to it if I wanted to. It feels like a little village in a beautiful way.

Ditmas is also a wonderful place to write and to practice. I’m lucky I live in a place where I can see trees and it’s relatively quiet. I mean I love it. I love it, and I didn’t even know it existed until that first place fell in my lap.

What are some of your favorite places in the neighborhood?

There was a period of time when I was hanging out at Bar Chord quite a bit; I haven’t been there in a while.

I am a big fan of Lea. I really enjoy that environment, and the wait staff just really figured it out. They make you feel welcome. They encourage you to stay, in a nice way. And the food is great.

In the last year or two I’ve been dining out less and less, and cooking more and more at home. I’ve been traveling a lot, which prevents me from being in the neighborhood as much as I would like. But I think pizza is my favorite food in the whole wide world, and I love to have a pizza at Lea.

Another place I really enjoy being but it gets so crowded it’s a little overwhelming sometimes is [Cafe] Madeline. I have friends in the neighborhood and we regularly will meet there and we sit there for a few hours and just chit chat.

You once said in an interview, “I’m exactly half-Jewish and half-black. Right down the middle, and then completely intertwined.” Do you find that Ditmas Park is a place where you encounter both parts of your heritage on a day-to-day basis?

Part of what I love about Ditmas is that it’s just so mixed. And that’s one of the first things I noticed just walking around before I knew anybody in the neighborhood. I have to live someplace that’s integrated. When you walk down Cortelyou, you really see everybody and that is where I always feel like I belong, in a really beautiful way. It’s something specific to Ditmas I think, and specific to New York City in this really beautiful way, and thank God we still have that.

The neighborhood, like all of Brooklyn, is facing rapid change, and the pace of gentrification makes both newcomers and people who have been here a long while wonder what the future is going to bring. Are you anxious about what’s happening in the neighborhood, and do you ever fear you may be priced out of Ditmas Park?

Oh completely. I had to move a little less than a year ago because I lived in a wonderful house on Beverley Road. We were all musicians. And the landlord lived in Philadelphia, and he was so generous. None of us were paying market rate, and we had the Beverley House concert series there you might be familiar with.

I don’t think we even understood how special it was until he sold it. We were all very sympathetic to the fact that it was time for him to cash in. And I was in a panic. I was like, “I’m a musician, I don’t make a lot of money. Where am I gonna live?” And I got very lucky and I moved around the corner to another house.

But I think for all of us out here living a creative life these days, the past 15 or so years in New York for sure there’s been a transition to something else that has made it very, very hard to maintain.

I’m an artist, so I’m one of the people who will move to a neighborhood and set it [gentrification]  all in motion, which is something that I have to live with and grapple with. But I think this is an issue that comes up daily for all of us. And for sure next time I have to move, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay in Ditmas. And it’s a real shame.

I live in a house. So when my lease is up my landlord can easily—they’re very nice people, but I understand the cost of living as well, so if they need to, they can raise the rent and that will make it impossible for me to say.

It’s not specific to Ditmas, of course, it’s the whole city. And it’s a real shame that we aren’t valuing working people, poor people, creative people, who don’t make the commensurate income that the city demands these days to just simply have a place to live.

It’s a strange moment in New York City, and I think that’s a lot to do with this record (“New York Nostalgia”). The nostalgia is for this other time when, as artists especially, we could live near each other intentionally. And it’s just sort of left to happenstance right now. I have friends in the neighborhood that managed to find an affordable place. But most of us live really far from each other now because you just go where you can find a place you can afford.

It’s a shame that there aren’t more protections, and we don’t value the arts in a way that protects the people that make the art.