MARIKA HUGHES’ VODKA GIMLET
Marika Hughes
Recipe
Vodka: 2 oz (choose a high-quality, smooth vodka)
Lime juice: 3/4 to 1 oz freshly squeezed
Simple syrup: 1/2 to 3/4 oz
Garnish: Lime wheel
When I asked Marika Hughes for a family recipe, she apologized, "I don't have a relationship with food or drink ancestrally."The sentence stayed with me. At first, I wondered if it was a way of keeping the conversation at a distance. After all, Marika's life is anything but lacking in stories.
Born in New York City on Christmas Eve of 1970, she often speaks of living between worlds. Her mother's family carried the history of Jewish displacement in Europe. Her grandfather was Emanuel Feuermann, one of the most celebrated cellists of the twentieth century.
Feuermann and daughter,
Her father's family carried another history: the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans left the South seeking safety, opportunity, and a future elsewhere. Two lineages. Two migrations. Two histories of movement and survival.
Music was present from the beginning. Her mother was a pianist. The legacy of her grandfather was never far away. Yet when I listen to Marika speak about her life, I find myself thinking less about famous names and more about her mother. The stories return to her again and again. Not only because she was a musician. But because she seemed to create worlds around her.
One of those worlds was Burgundy. A small jazz club on Manhattan's Upper West Side that Marika's parents opened in the 1980s. Musicians gathered there. Artists gathered there. Neighbors gathered there. People passed through. People stayed. Years later, Marika would describe Burgundy as almost a third child in the family. That image stayed with me. Not a club. Not a business. But something woven into the life of the family itself.
Marika’s mom, dad, and sibling.
Marika lost her mother when she was twenty-one. In the years that followed, she would lose other members of her family as well. The losses are impossible to separate from her story. Yet neither are they the whole story. Because somewhere along the way, Marika began building a life that belonged entirely to her.
Finding her own musical voice. Creating community in her own way. Following paths that no family history could fully map out for her. And perhaps that is why her answer stayed with me. Not because there was no story. But maybe because there were so many….
Family names. Histories. Expectations. Loss. Every direction seems to lead toward inheritance. Toward memory. Toward lineage. And perhaps that is why I kept thinking about that Gimlet. Not because it carried a family story. But because it didn't. In a life surrounded by all of that, perhaps there is comfort in one small thing that asks nothing of you.
When I asked what she would like to share, she smiled,"There's no story."Then she paused, "I just like a Gimlet."
Kanpai!
Yurie Ito
Marika listening as the Bloodlines Interwoven artists trade stories over a nightcap.
