Kokayi

Artist. Producer.Educator | Connector of dots… Preeminent Improvisational Vocalist, GRAMMY-nominated musician, Creative DSGN for projects with Grammy-nominated artist Goldink and artist/musician Guillermo Brown (James Corden Show). He can be heard on Whose Hat is This? Everything’s Ok, Goldlink’s At What Cost, MTV's Rebel Music, Kevin Hart's Laugh At My Pain, A'Larrache (Canal +), I Ain’t Scared of You: a Tribute to Bernie Mac and over 60 titles spanning: Jazz, Hip Hop, Rock and R&B. School of Improvisational Music (guest faculty), \ OneBeat mentor, freelance music emissary with the U.S. State Department, Music Supervisor - Untitled Interactive Games. Chief Ideator and co-curator of BeatsnBeans: a discussion series on creativity, coffee culture, and the re-imagining of creative spaces. Recipient of the Halcyon Artist Fellowship, DCCAH Artist Fellowship, and Sister Cities Grants. Kokayi has featured on dozens of albums since the onset of his career, including titles by contemporaries such as Goldlink, Gregoire Maret, Terri Lynne Carrington, Omar Sosa, Steve Coleman, and Dafnis Prieto as well as continuing to perform as a member of Steve Coleman’s Five Elements, Ambrose Akinmusire’s Origami Harvest and Dafnis Prieto’s Proverb Trio. "My work is an amalgamation of my life experiences as filtered through; DC, Go-go and the music begat from the African diaspora."