Educator, Artist Ryan Gilbert, also known as “Phlegm,” is a New Orleans educator, artist and DJ, but he prefers to identify as a storyteller. Across each outlet, he’s rooted in the same belief: community is both the foundation and the purpose of his work. “As a Black New Orleanian, I don’t know a life without community,” he says. “DJing, teaching, my art practice, they’re the ways I can pay people back.” In 2022, Black Education for New Orleans (BE NOLA) recognized Gilbert with its Black is Brilliant: Teacher of the Year award, and the next year, Gilbert was a semi-finalist for the state’s Teacher of the Year award.
Alexis Marceaux, 37 Musician, Sweet Crude and Alexis & the Sanity; Director of Community Programming, Lafitte Greenway It didn’t take Alexis Marceaux long to start playing music. “As soon as I could walk, I was hitting the cowbell” along to her dad’s drum practices, she says. At 9, Marceaux started studying music and joined the local choir, and within several years, she was playing piano and guitar and writing her own music. Then it was off to study musical theater at the New Orleans Center
TAKEOUT and DELIVERY
— MADDIE SPINNER
for the Creative Arts to become a more well-rounded performer. “In my bands, I definitely utilize that skillset tremendously,” Marceaux says. “I get to emote with my face like an actor, I get to move my body and dance ... and I get to use my voice as an instrument.” Marceaux met Sam Craft and several of her other future bandmates at a Blue Nile show in 2009, when “the New Orleans indie rock scene was popping off,” she says. She’d grown up singing in Louisiana French with her grandfather, an accordion player, and she and Craft bonded over wanting to bring the language to a younger audience. “Putting this pop spin on the dialect allows people that wouldn’t know about the history of it to learn about the history of it,” she says. Over the following years, they formed the duo Alexis & the Samurai (now Alexis & the Sanity) and indie rock six-piece Sweet Crude. Marceaux was also a contestant on “The Voice” in 2012. Sweet Crude plays the local festival circuit and toured throughout the U.S. and Canada with Tank and the Bangas in 2017. The band is currently working on an album completely reimagining Louisiana French classics, planned for 2027. As director of community programming for the Laffite Greenway, she helps bring live music, theater and more to the public space and give a platform to new performers. “It’s important for our emerging artists to have a place to feel like they’re learning and comfortable,” she says. — KAYLEE POCHE
Nicholas Bijou, 35 CEO, Einstein Charter Schools When New Orleans native Nicholas Bijou started teaching in 2013, he measured success in terms of something less tangible than test scores. “For me, if a student left believing in themselves, believing they could achieve more than they thought was possible, then I had succeeded,” he says. “Today, I still feel like it’s the same. That vision has just grown.” PAGE 44
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Ryan Gilbert, 34
Gilbert comes from a lineage of educators, and he has spent the last 11 years teaching science, where he often takes complex lessons and curates them into immersive and theatrical experiences. One of his most beloved projects is a pickle crime scene for his forensics class, accompanied by a New Orleans-style funeral. It’s a direct example of those life philosophies. He also coined the mantra “Everything You Love About New Orleans Is Because of Black People.” As a DJ, Gilbert draws from the Black experience to create spaces rooted in collective joy. And those same instincts shape his visual artwork, which he describes as a “Black spiritual theatrical practice.” Through self-portraiture and influenced by ceremonial face painting, Gilbert creates “ritual dramas,” a concept coined by Marimba Ani that aims to “affirm that Black people exist, and to cement themselves in place and time,” braiding Black ethos, Black influence and Black inspiration together into one.
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