Performer uses her upbringing to inspire art
Coco Elysses is a performer, conductor and composer who is from Robbins. She also is the Chairwoman The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. PHOTO PROVIDED BY COCO ELYSSES.
By Tia Carol Jones
Coco’s inspiration comes from the world. Moving through the world. People, places, things and events really shape her into wanting to say a thing. Coco didn’t discover how the Village of Robbins informed her craft until the last 20 years. That is when she started to really write and create art, as opposed to performing art that was created by other people.
“Oftentimes, the people of the community, my family, the people of the community who were like family, became the subject of inspiration. Or, it could be a principle about that particular family or that particular person that I grew up with or I saw, who said certain things and it would become a part of the tapestry that I like to create and talk about,” she said.
The first thing Coco wrote that she performed was a one-woman show about her mother. It was called, “You can’t hide,” and was inspired by Suzan-Lori Parks, who is Coco’s favorite writer. Parks, the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright wrote a piece called, “Pickling,” about a woman who pickles her beloved objects in a jar. One line in that piece about mother’s milk stood out to Coco.
Coco performed at the Museum of Contemporary Arts. One of the pieces she performed is titled, “Robbins Juke Joint.” It was a very vulnerable moment for her because everything she performed at the MCA she wrote and composed, and it was the first time those pieces were heard, outside of rehearsals. It is something Coco wanted to revisit and continue, she called it a work in progress.
“It was pretty exciting because oftentimes the people who are part of the subject matter are unsung heroes and sheroes that may not have a career that extended outside of the four blocks or ten blocks … but they were celebrated in our hearts,” she said, adding that the people who knew the people who were the subject matter for the piece, would smile, laugh or even get sad at the mention of that person’s name, because they are gone.
Overall, the performance of “Robbins Juke Joint was exciting for Coco and it was interesting for her to see what people came away with from the performance. Coco believes that the blues is healing and being around people who are familiar. She wanted to incorporate those aspects in the music and lyrics of the piece. She wanted an opportunity for people to see themselves really authentically and heal from it and learn from it.
Coco considers herself a folk artist, she describes herself as Afrofuturistic, Folkloric Funk. She incorporates a lot of different textures in her work. The name Elixir Ensemble describes a mixture of different things that have the intention to heal and to touch. “All of our journeys are super duper important and the people we interface with, we interface with them for a reason. We should remember the why,” she said. For more information about Coco Elysses, visit https://cocoelyssesdarcell.com.
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