Improvised Genius: Kokayi’s Live at Big Ears Reimagines the Jazz Vocal
Recorded in Knoxville, TN, March 29, 2025 — a landmark improvised performance that redefines jazz vocals.
Knoxville, TN — Washington, D.C.-born artist KOKAYI, the only improvising vocalist in jazz whose vocal aesthetic bridges Bobby McFerrin’s adventurousness with Jon Lucien’s lush soul, releases his new live album, Live at Big Ears. Recorded on March 29, 2025, at the celebrated Big Ears Festival, the album captures KOKAYI at the height of his powers, creating complete songs out of thin air with no set list, no written lyrics, and no premeditated direction.
Backed by an exceptional quartet—Drew Kid (piano/keyboard), Kris Funn (bass), and Sheldon Thwaites (drums)—KOKAYI transforms improvisation into revelation. Across an hour-long set, he and the band deliver songs that traverse anxiety, crumbling empires, death, old vinyl records, and the absurdities of modern life. With equal parts humor, poignancy, and unflinching social critique, Kokayi embodies the freedom and immediacy that define jazz at its core.
Highlights include “Vinyl,” an ecstatic yet critical ode to the greats—Alice and John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman—while indicting the rigid structures that divide the genre; “Drew Terrace,” where playful vocal stutters mirror the stress of contemporary existence; and “Called Me Home,” a searing meditation on death sung from inside the casket itself. Even the lighthearted moments—such as “Shorty Baking The Lick,” with its wellness banter, and the danceable “Gathered”—carry the wit, warmth, and vitality that make KOKAYI’s performances unforgettable.
Live at Big Ears is more than an album; it’s a document of risk, communion, and mastery. It is jazz as it was intended: alive, unpredictable, and unbound.
KOKAYI is a Grammy-nominated artist and a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow whose voice has been heard on Ambrose Akinmusire’s Honey From a Winter Stone and Milena Casado’s O.C.T. A longtime collaborator with Steve Coleman, Nate Smith, and Terri Lyne Carrington, KOKAYI is known for forging deep connections with avant-garde innovators while carving his own path as a singular improviser. With Live at Big Ears, he reasserts his place as one of the most daring and essential voices in contemporary music.