This is a non-ticketed event and is not open to the general public. Please listen and look for highlights on-air and online, coming soon!

Doors 6 p.m. | Performance 7 p.m.

The Current’s Emerging Artists Showcase brings together artistic curators from communities across our region to showcase and develop the next generation of songwriters and performers. Powered by The Current with support from the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation and the Minnesota Legacy Amendment, the purpose of the Emerging Artists Showcase is to enable and empower musicians who are in the beginning phases of their careers by providing a platform to cultivate their craft and build a portfolio of recorded work to advance their creative goals.

The first showcase will take place at Sacred Heart Music Center in Duluth, a coveted venue that has helped launch artists from the North Shore. Join The Duluth Local Show host Brittany Lind, along with curators David Huckfelt and Khayman Goodsky for an evening of music. This inaugural showcase will introduce you to the music of Minneapolis-based Laura Hugo (Diné [Navajo]) and the Oshkii Giizhik Singers (Fond du Lac Anishinaabe) from Cloquet, Minnesota.

EMERGING ARTISTS

Laura Hugo

Laura Hugo is an Indigenous singer/songwriter from Teec Nos Pos, Arizona, located in the Navajo Nation. She moved to Minnesota in 2010 to pursue music and has since played all over the Twin Cities and around the Midwest. She uses her experiences with grief, mental health, and her general confusion about her place in the world to write honest, heart-wrenching, and relatable songs. 

Learn more about Laura Hugo here: Laura Hugo creates intricate songs that process trauma with tenderness

Oshkii Giizhik Singers

Oshkii Giizhik Singers (OGS) is a group of women from the Fond du Lac/Duluth area Native American community who sing traditional and contemporary Anishinaabe songs while hand drumming. OGS was founded in 2006 and has recorded three albums, the first of which, “It is a New Day” was awarded a Native American Music Award for best traditional recording in 2009. The group roster has had over 50 different singers over the 16 years OGS has been together with the average number of singers on a given date being anywhere from 4 to 8.

Learn more about Lyz Jaakola, who founded OGS, here: Why Indigenous creatives chose opera to celebrate a Dakota activist and artist

THE EMERGING ARTIST TEAM

David Huckfelt: Music Curator, Performer

David Huckfelt is a singer/ lyricist /activist and founding frontman of Minneapolis indie-folk cult favorites The Pines. An Iowa native and former theology student, Huckfelt attended the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop before turning his attention to songwriting and performing. With improvisational mastery, Huckfelt’s shows and songs of "no-spiritual-surrender" have earned him praise from David Fricke (Rolling Stone), Bill McKibben (The New Yorker), T Bone Burnett & Jim Jarmusch, as well as a devoted following from small-town opera houses & theaters to national festival stages like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Edmonton and Calgary Folk Fests, and the legendary First Avenue in his beloved Minneapolis home. Sharing stages with Mavis Staples, Emmylou Harris, Bon Iver, Calexico, Trampled By Turtles, Rosanne Cash & more, an early encounter and collaboration with radical Native American poet & American Indian Movement leader John Trudell has a lasting impact, and introduced Huckfelt as ally and collaborator to an array of Indigenous artists & activists including Winona LaDuke, Louise Erdrich, Keith Secola, Gary Farmer and more. Working for climate justice and tribal sovereignty under the banner of music + resistance, in 2019 he became artistic director of Honor the Earth: Water Is Life Festival, working with LaDuke and artists from Ani Difranco and The Indigo Girls to Low & Dessa to raise attention and resources for Minnesota's tribal nations. With roots in the same fertile Midwestern soil that produced legendary folk singers like John Prine and Greg Brown, and a poet's eye and an activist's heart, David's new solo work preserves a rugged optimism that blasts through layers of dark in real time with songs that speak volumes, soft & clear.

Khayman Goodsky: Co-Curator, Videographer Assistance

Khayman Goodsky (Bois Forte band member) is a local Two-spirit Ojibwe filmmaker who has lived in Duluth, MN most of her life. She decided to pursue DIY filmmaking in the freshman year of college. After Jonathan Thunder mentored her in animation and creative economy, Khayman proceeded to make several short films collaborating with other Indigenous actors, film-makers, and musicians to bring her own stories to life. Her work usually contains key values and teachings from her Ojibwe culture mixed in with experimental art. Several of her works have been played in the DSFF and other local film festivals.

Khayman has worked for the Duluth Superior Film Festival and for the North by North International Film Festival as a film programmer as she is dedicated to raising awareness to authentic Indigenous stories and films. Khayman has also been involved with youth work since 2016 and had dedicated to helping queer youth feel more safe and welcome in the world. She values the time she spends with her family and can usually be found dressing up at comic cons with family and friends.

Jonathan Thunder: Artist

Thunder infuses his personal lens with real-time world experiences using a wide range of mediums. He is known for his surreal paintings, digitally animated films and installations in which he addresses subject matter of personal experience and social commentary. Jonathan is an enrolled member of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe, and makes his home and studio in Duluth, MN. He has attended the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, NM and studied Visual Effects and Motion Graphics in Minneapolis, MN at the Art Institute International. His work has been featured in many states, regional, and national exhibitions, as well as in local and international publications. Thunder is the recipient of a 2020-21 Pollock – Krasner Foundation Award for his risk taking in painting. Since his first solo exhibit in 2004, he has won several awards for his short films in national and international competitions. His painting and digital work is in the permanent collections of multiple Museums and Universities.

Brittany Lind: The Current’s Duluth Host

Brittany Lind is host of The Duluth Local Show. In her role, Lind oversees operations and leads audience engagement efforts and community partnerships at stations in Ely, Grand Marais, Hibbing, Hinckley, and Duluth.

The Current’s Ticket Giveaway

The Current is pleased to offer a ticket giveaway to the Emerging Artists Showcase. Enter by noon (CST) on Monday, Nov. 28, for a chance to win a pair of passes to this special event. Ten (10) winners will be selected at random to receive a pair of passes to attend. Please use an email address you check because winners will be contacted by email.

This giveaway is now closed - congratulations to the lucky winners!

Funded in part by the Jane S. Smith Memorial Fund of the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation and the Minnesota Clean Water Land & Legacy Amendment.