Meet Marissa Guzman: Artist with an act

By Mick Jacobs

What did your childhood bestow upon you musically?

MG: Well that was a big inspiration because my dad was in the most successful white group at Motown records.  It was really exciting to be a part of a thousand screaming fans who wanted to meet my dad, and it really inspired me to want to do something that makes people so happy!  It just made everyone smile, and forget their worries and dance and it just really hit home for me.  It took a while though, because I was so incredibly shy, as a little girl.  I didn’t want my mom to hold my hand in public.  I was just so embarrassed about everything.  It wasn’t until I was like probably 25-26 to be able to sing in front of people.

Reading your bio on Bandcamp you said you had a “spiritual awakening” on the west coast.  Would you delve into what that awakening was and what it made you realize?

MG: So I quit my job in marketing because I was just in one of those horribly boring (to me) jobs where you stare at your computer all day every day, plugging in numbers, spreadsheets.  And all I would do was listen to music and dream about performing and singing and writing songs.  So I arranged for a meditation retreat to go to.  And when I was at this retreat I had this awakening that what would make me happy was not being in the corporate world.  The more you meditate, you know, the more you kind of connect with your higher power, and I was doing a lot of writing exercises.  It was a long weekend called “embracing your shadow.”

            It was all about how when you’re young you start with this little satchel and every year people do things to hurt your feelings, or something happens to you that you don’t process emotionally, and the satchel gets bigger and bigger and turns into a big heavy bag.  So by the time you’re in your 20s you have like a suitcase that you’re carrying.  That suitcase represents your shadow.  They really talked about how you feed your shadow with fear, so your shadow gets bigger and bigger the more fearful you are.  The reason I was even in the corporate marketing world was because I was so scared I wouldn’t make it as a musician, so I just put all my energy into my backup plan, which was marketing. 

            

How did music save you? 

MG: Well, as I mentioned, I was very depressed at my job and what do most people do when they have problems?  Medicate.  Our office even had a bar on site because the VP wanted us to stay there!  So I definitely didn't drink as much after quitting, that for sure.  Plus the ability to finally feel as free as a butterfly to go and do whatever i wanted was the happiest and most joyful time in my life.  That's part of the reason I named my album Joy Road.

             So when I went to this retreat and they were talking about fear and the shadow, me just quieting the chatter in my brains where I was meditating a lot, I finally had this aha moment where I was like “AHA!  The reason I’m so depressed right now,” (because I actually had an anxiety attack from stress at work) is because I have no time for music.”  So that was my awakening, that I had no time for music because I was working at this job I hated so I impulsively quit my job.  I had no money saved, I went on food stamps.  I was broke as a joke, and just put my heart and soul into writing and producing and recording an album, and, yeah that’s the story.

            

One of the songs that struck me was “San Francisco” where you talk about running around in your underwear, and making “no frowny brownies”?  What connection do you have with that city?

            

MG:  Oh man!  That city is my favorite city in the world, because San Fran is the reason that I felt courageous enough to quit my career in marketing and do music, because they embrace the art.  There are so many people who survive on doing what they love, like artists, musicians, graphic designers, gallery owners, you name it.  They just celebrate creativity, more than any other city I’ve ever been to in my entire life.  Everywhere I went it was like creative everywhere.  Apple’s headquarters are near SF so obviously, think outside the box.  So you have all these little messages everywhere you go, even if you’re driving down the freeway looking at billboards, which that happened for me.  I would always pass the Apple billboards on my way to work.  The people who make up those corporations are so successful because they do think outside the box, and I think that’s because they’re not scared to follow their heart and be inspired. 

            That song kind of refers to being free because so many people are just free to have as much fun as they want.  It’s like they embrace the life balance a little bit more than the work balance, and that makes them more productive at work.  That song was just about being free like having a party at my house, with a guy, just celebrating our lives, eating ganja food.  I was making pot brownies and marijuana’s basically legal in SF.  And just playing twister, you know it was just a fun love party, which we did, a man and a woman.

            

Do you believe artists have an obligation to help other people, and if so, how do we go about that?

            

MG:  I am just one of those people who gets sad when I see other people sad, so I feel as an artist if I can inspire people to follow their light and pursue their dreams, then I’m doing my job.  That’s like half my job! Half my job is making people happy, the other half is making myself happy with my music. 

            I just feel like if I wasn’t trying to help people than I wouldn’t have even gotten to where I was.  Because the whole reason I had the success I had in South Africa was because I wanted to donate half my album profits to NextAid.  So because I was putting that good energy into the universe, the law of attraction brought it back to me and I had success, whereas I don’t think I would have the success I did have without the positive initiative behind it.

            

Are there certain issues that you think artists should be especially aware of?

            

MG: I guess it depends on your passions, but you know, there are political problems, there’s our jail system.  There are problems everywhere, and I think it’s up to artists to use their fan-base, because they have such a broad reach.  We are walking advertisements. 

            A big part of an artist like Beyoncé is that she could make one post about helping to feed a foster care home that didn’t have food; that foster care home would be rebuilt as a huge corporation with all the money that they made.  I think that’s so important for artists to use their skills that they have with social networking.  They have to make a change.  If they don’t I, I don’t necessarily look down on then, but I kind of wish that they would.  It makes me more interested in artists’ music if they do positive things in their life.

What would you say to someone in suffering about how music could help them?

MG: I think if people can relate with someone else’s story and see that they’re not alone and they can relate to that story or a song about an ex, or a heartbreak.  If they can grieve, or express an emotion when listening to it, then they can actually get their fears out, and I think that’s healing right there.  I mean, so many artists built their whole album on a heart-break, and they become famous.  And it’s because so many people can identify with those horribly sad emotions. 

How do you think artists can make people want to talk about things like mass incarceration rates, healthcare, or issues with animal abuse?  How can an artist make these issues “more appealing”?

MG: It is hard, I’ve tried it.  I’ve actually been taking a step back and kind of observing on my own how other artists do with their songs, how they get political.  I don’t think that people want to hear bad news at the end of the day.  If it’s about something more shallow (not that a heartbreak is shallow) it becomes more appealing to listeners, since most don’t want to hear heavy, heavy views.  So it’s hard to get people to listen to those things because everyone already has their own view on it.  Sometimes you actually lose fans over being too political.  If I’m liberal, and I were to start posting about my beliefs, I would lose fans.