KOKAYI - KOKAYI: LIVE AT BIG EARS (2025) [Hi-Res]

Please meet Kokayi: No, not the Washington, D.C.-born iconoclast who helped establish the city as a hip-hop landmark. I mean the leader of a different kind; the only improvising vocalist in jazz, whose vocal aesthetic is equal parts Bobby McFerrin and Jon Lucien, Black Classical Music in a packed room in Holland. I type the words “Black Classical Music” without irony, because Kokayi harbors the same elegance and commands the same respect. It doesn’t differ from the scat singing that jazz purists canonize, and shouldn’t be discounted due to the undercurrent of funk, rock and go-go coursing through the set. This is jazz the way it was intended — shifting within the scope of a song, leaning into the moment, unencumbered by frivolous perceptions of what it’s supposed to be. With Kokayi, open-minded listening is essential: Let the music swirl and take shape and be what it is.

That’s the approach of Live at Big Ears, the best example of his creative ethos. Recorded March 29, 2025 in Knoxville, the day after he performed with the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire as a part of his ensemble, Kokayi gave the best show I’ve ever seen him do. Perhaps inspired by the festival’s platform or still on a high from the previous night, Kokayi ascended, cutting across topics while the band — Drew Kid on piano and keyboard; Kris Funn on bass; and Sheldon Thwaites on drums — offered an equally adept score of known and unknown arrangements. Funny yet serious, whimsical and pensive, Kokayi sang of anxiety, crumbling empires, death and old vinyl records with sharp dexterity. The band was remarkably brisk, dotting vast genres and tempos, pushing each other and the vocalist to unforeseen heights. And it was all improvised. No set list. No discussion of where to direct the music. No lyrics written ahead of time. That this was mostly improvised makes it even more stunning. For over an hour in front of hundreds of engaged onlookers, Kokayi pulled comprehensive songs out of thin air.

I almost cried watching him and the band perform that day — not just because it was a grand reintroduction for a beloved artist, but because he examined disparate subjects with nuance and clarity. On the surface, the song “Vinyl” sounds like a celebration of music royalty: Alice and John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman, among others. At its apex, once Kokayi starts scatting and the band accelerates to keep pace, he also indicts the structures — and, well, the people — that segregate jazz. Whether it’s bebop, post-bop or avant-garde, he argues, it should be respected as one sound. It’s also a song about nostalgia and how music can conjure joy and escapism. “Take me away,” Kokayi repeats, his voice more declarative with each drum hit. “Take me away.” The track “Drew Terrace” is just as nervy: Here, the quartet pivots between calm and aggression, a rightful backdrop for the mental disquiet unpacked here. Even though Kokayi sings of a make-believe addiction to Xanax and Ritalin, the delivery is light, so much so that the patrons dance to the dismay. They sway because the lyrics are relatable: Kokayi isn’t on stage lamenting personal struggles, he’s bemoaning societal angst — the stress of daily existence we all face, and the speed by which we’re expected to operate; it’s enough to make anyone start stuttering, like he does on the track to emphasize his point.

Other songs are more somber, like “Called Me Home,” on which Kokayi sings about death from the standpoint of the deceased. After Drew cues up a church organ (think the beginning of Prince and the Revolution’s “Let’s Go Crazy”), the vocalist plots a mournful scene: a funeral procession, a crying mother, flowers on the casket, despair from inside the casket. “Everybody done put me in the ground and threw the dirt on my face,” Kokayi exclaims. “All I can think about is why am I?” He feels the pallbearers carry his flesh, and he wonders who’s going to look after his parents when they grow old.

“And I think about the kids I left behind,” Kokayi declares, “little nieces and these nephews, and these stories that go untold.” The song, albeit briefly, also touches on lesser-considered aspects of death: What happens when the memorial is over and the grief subsides? When the check-ins slow to a stop, and the obituaries get thrown into a drawer somewhere? Do we remember the departed? The ones left behind? “It should be a time of joy, but I don’t feel so joyous,” Kokayi mutters. “And I should be so full of happiness, but I’m not happy” in this dark, cold box underground.

This was an interactive show, and throughout the set, Kokayi and the band had fun with the audience. At the beginning of “Shorty Baking The Lick,” they engaged in some lighthearted wellness, encouraging us to breathe while Funn took the lead on bass. “Gathered,” a jazz-dance hybrid, was a straight-ahead groove about dancing until the morning. Youngins need not apply, however. “After a long night,” Kokayi says from his pulpit, “and I might drip and sway, but I’ve got … Bengay.” The crowd laughs: “And I’ll rub it on my joints and I’ll just anoint and appoint myself … the Queen of the ball, the King of it all.” In the end, that’s really what Kokayi’s show was аbout: everything at the same time, jazz without pretense or barriers, songs that land and stick to your ribs, improv you have to hear to believe. Thankfully this recording exists. There’s still time to join the congregation.

— Marcus J. Moore