With the release of his third album, “Beacon,” Okorie Johnson, who performs under the moniker OkCello, has set a standard for himself that is best characterized as stratospheric.
“‘Beacon’ is my attempt to be Miles Davis, to be as artistically naked and courageous and honest as I can,” says the cellist-songwriter who’s known for live-sound-looping, improvisation and storytelling in concert. His original compositions are an amalgam of classical, jazz, EDM, reggae and funk. And the influences for the 11 tracks — six full songs, and five musical interludes — on his latest effort are equally varied.
Credit: Courtesy of OKCello
Credit: Courtesy of OKCello
“Um Boom Boom Bap,” an onomatopoeia for one of the rhythms in the cello percussion for the song, was born of a collaboration with a pair of Atlanta-based aerialists, Nicole Mermeans and Fareedah “Free” Aleem, and inspired by the late Emma Amos’ “Twined Flowers” painting. “Elder Roots and Tree” was informed by Masud Olufani’s public art installation, “Elder,” at the Freedom Park Conservancy, while the melody for the composition quotes Paul Robeson’s performance of Joyce Kilmer’s poem, “Trees.” Johnson even kidnapped and repurposed the theme song from the 1970s sitcom “All In the Family” in his track titled “These Are the Days,” giving the old tune a new home in an Afro Cuban harmonic musical world.
Before launching his career as a professional musician, Johnson self-identified as a writer despite having played the cello since he was 6 years old. He spent 11 years teaching high school English at the Westminster Schools in Buckhead and his alma mater, the Landon School for Boys in Bethesda, Maryland, before recommitting himself to the cello in 2015. Today, the Morehouse College graduate is an adherent to Leonard Bernstein’s belief that music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable. “The cello is what put me in touch with my most honest, intimate, personal thoughts and feelings,” he says.
Johnson recently talked with ArtsATL about the overlaps between teaching and engaging audiences from a bandstand; where he goes when being transported by music; and why he considers Atlanta the closest thing to Wakanda for the creative class. Johnson will be featured at City Winery’s Jazz Brunch on Sunday, Dec. 19.
Credit: Leslie Andrews Photography
Credit: Leslie Andrews Photography
ArtsATL: You’ve called “Beacon” “a bat signal for our times.” Please explain.
Okorie Johnson: “Beacon” for me is a very willful and intentional dreaming, imaginations and aspiration for the world I want to live in and the person I want to be.
I understand the importance of journalism and telling the truth about the world we live in now. But I think myth-making — and how myths about the world we want to live in are born — are just as important. Artists are the ones who give us those ideas. I want to be engaged in telling stories, creating the primordial ooze out of which the world that we want to live in comes. And I hope that this album, my music, my example can be that for other artists and musicians in particular.
ArtsATL: I’m curious about the liminal space you occupy when performing live. Frequently, your eyes are closed and you appear to be transported to another plane of existence. The same can be said of your audience. At times like these, do you feel like you’re communicating on the same frequency as your listeners?
Johnson: For me, there is a transportation that happens on a good day or night when I’m playing. You know that retina afterburn when you look at a light, close your eyes, and you can kind of still see the color of the light dancing in your eyes? As I’m playing and my eyes are closed, I’m playing to that light. If it’s really doing what it’s supposed to do for me, I’m trying to go to that place where I feel like the music is swirling around that light and I just want to play through it. I’ve heard people say that they are as moved by watching my relationship to the music as they are having their own relationship to the music.
I think if I’m being transported, I’m giving them permission to kind of let go and see where the music takes them, and that is how that exchange works. It’s kind of like you won’t serve food at your house that you don’t eat and like. In performance, I feel like I’m eating food that is nourishing and I want to share it with my audience and if it transports them similarly, then I’m doing my job.
ArtsATL: The scope and scale of your music is cinematic. Have you scored the soundtrack for a film or TV show?
Johnson: Recently, I was lucky enough to work with Ryon Horne, who directed the documentary, “The Imperfect Alibi,” that was based on Joshua Sharpe’s investigative reporting for the AJC about the murder of two elderly black people at a church in rural Georgia. The film won a regional Emmy this year.
I wrote for several film and video projects during the racial reckoning period in 2020, and also got to write three poems and three movements as an Arts and Social Justice Fellow at Emory University last year. I love telling stories with my music. If someone’s reading this piece and wants to hire me to score a full-on commercial film, I’m all for it.ArtsATL: Writers, sculptors and visual artists are among your biggest fans and some of them have cited your music as instrumental to their practices. What are your thoughts about this cross-pollination?
Johnson: I think creativity is recycled. I recently saw Gregory Porter in concert and came home so inspired by his poise, artistry, execution and showmanship. I hope that inspiration will turn into some new things for me, and I hope those things I create will turn into other things for other writers, artists, sculptors or dancers.
The work of being a professional musician is setting up equipment, recording and promoting. But the joy is creating something that continues to live on in other people’s art. It’s really an honor, a really brilliant and beautiful phenomenon that I’m so proud to be a part of.
ArtsATL: How has your tenure as an English teacher informed your approach to engaging live audiences?
Johnson: My style for teaching was very conversational. I’d walk into the classroom with a loose skeleton of a lesson plan that was informed by who was in the class that day — who showed up, how they were feeling, the questions they had, the energy they were bringing into the room. Early on, I learned that if I could get my students to speak on the first day of class, they’d continue to talk the rest of the year. So I made sure every student had an opportunity to hear their own voice at the start of each semester.
Teaching was this great daily exercise in improvisation and creating space for others to amplify their voices. As moving as some concerts can be, sometimes the listener’s experience is exclusively external. Whatever is happening that’s magical is happening on the stage. But the feedback, banter, and interactions I bring to the stage with my audience makes them feel like whatever evolves is our experience. I think that’s unique for going to a music concert.
ArtsATL: A special feature of your show — in which you ask listeners to close their eyes and imagine a protagonist, an era or a color as you play a progression on the cello — is called “Storytime.” (Listen here to hear what Lois Reitzes visualized in response to Johnson’s playing during his appearance on WABE’s “City Lights.”)
How did the idea for this style of audience participation come to you?
Johnson: “Storytime” was one of the pieces I created over my 13-day residency at the Hambidge Center for the Arts in 2016.
While there, I improved a progression that had narrative feel, but I had a block and couldn’t put a story to it. So, I incorporated the work into a set where instead of my naming the story I would let my audience do it. Invariably, everyone walks away with their own personal interpretation of a song.
As a former English teacher, getting to create a context for audience-centered, super personal, amazingly varied and diverse responses to music has been a dream. I am acutely aware of the fact that the real blessings are those moments. As long as I keep getting to have those for the rest of my life, I feel like doing the work I’m supposed to do.
Credit: Contributed by Naushad Virani
Credit: Contributed by Naushad Virani
ArtsATL: You’ve called Atlanta “Wakanda.” How has the city shaped you as an artist?
Johnson: Within months of coming to Morehouse, I joined a poetry group called Cypher and was cutting my teeth with classmates who’ve gone on to be great academics and writers. Within a year of being in that group, I started playing the cello with my best friend, Julian Tillery, who played acoustic guitar. Writing, performing poetry and collaborating with a fellow musician was the beginning of my thinking of myself as an artist.
Only Atlanta — and its really beautiful, communal and collaborative environment — allowed me to think of myself that way, even when I was a starving artist playing with India Arie, De La Soul, Big Boi of OutKast and Doria Roberts after graduating from college.
This city is not competitive. It’s not dog-eat-dog. It’s not ‘I can’t share an opportunity for you because there’ll be fewer for me.’ It has been the most generous artistic space. And it was really affordable for me until 2017, when gentrification shifted into fifth gear. When people talk about their experiences as artists in other cities, it’s never as warm and fuzzy and as collaborative as it has been for me in Atlanta.
Because of all those things — coupled with being a Black city that is interested in all manner of and performance of Blackness, and because of its being kind of a hub for people all across the country — Atlanta has been my artistic home. Even when I go back to D.C. or other cities, I don’t feel as remotely plugged in as I do when I’m here. I hope it is able to retain all those beautiful, wonderful things that I love about it, but it would be disingenuous of me to say anything other than Atlanta is integrally connected to who I am as an artist.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
Working closely with the American Press Institute, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is embarking on an experiment to identify, nurture and expand a network of news partnerships across metro Atlanta and the state.
Our newest partner, ArtsATL (www.artsatl.org), is a nonprofit organization that plays a critical role in educating and informing audiences about metro Atlanta’s arts and culture. Founded in 2009, ArtsATL’s goal is to help build a sustainable arts community contributing to the economic and cultural health of the city.
Over the next several weeks, we’ll be introducing more partners, and we’d love to hear your feedback.
You can reach Managing Editor Mark A. Waligore via email at mark.waligore@ajc.com.
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