Okorie Johnson
Feature Article / New Album
Okorie “OkCello” Johnson uses “Beacon” to explore deeper layers in his music
ArtsATL
November 2021

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 at 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.

“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, December 19…

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE, but there’s one question we at Hambidge especially appreciate:

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 below 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.

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