Kokayi

Kokayi is a preeminent Improvisational Vocalist, Author, Producer, GRAMMY-nominated musician, and multi-disciplinary fine artist is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow for Music Composition (the first emcee to be granted a Guggenheim for music composition), Halcyon Arts Fellow, and Nicholson Arts Fellow, has been a TEDxWDC presenter, speaking on “collaboration and the creative economy”. and has served as Artist in Residence at Music Meeting in Nijmegen, NL. He can be heard on over 60 titles spanning: Jazz, Hip Hop, Rock, and R&B. About his book “You Are Ketchup: and Other Fly Music Tales” (Globe Pequot) the Washington Post writes “written in a tone so conversational you can practically hear it in your ear, “You Are Ketchup” feels like a megadose of straight advice from a muso-mentor who’s been there. And, of course, Kokayi has been all over the place.”

Kokayi has facilitated workshops at the School of Improvisational Music, Monash (Melbourne, AU), Universidade Lusíada (Lisbon, PT), Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, and San Francisco State. He is a collaborator and mentor with the international arts program OneBeat and has worked as a freelance music emissary with the U.S. State Department, as Chief Ideator and co-curator of BeatsnBeans: a discussion series on creativity, coffee culture, and the re- imagining of creative spaces and serves as an Arts and Creative consultant for Interledger Foundation designing their FUTURE|Money arts-centered grants and projects around financial equity in the open payments and web3 space.

Kokayi continues to work as a music producer and performer, currently touring with his own band as well as with Ambrose Akinmusire, Terri Lynne Carrington + Social Science, Whose Hat is This?, Ego Mondo, Nate Smith +Kinfolk, Quite Sane, Sanity, Dafnis Prieto and more.

“My work is an amalgamation of his life experiences as filtered through, DC, Go-Go, and the African/African American cultural influences created and passed on throughout the African diaspora.”