"That day I was punished, which was habitual because I was a very mischievous child. At one point, the school principal walked past the music class and heard me sing Mariah Carey's Can't live without you. Then he took me to his office and proposed a deal: if I sang at the end-of-year party, he would lift my punishment. That's how I performed for the first time in front of a large audience, dressed as Dracula and interpreting Aretha Franklin's I'm losing you". Leaning against the bar, with a freshly served Seagram's gin and tonic after a frugal tapas meal, singer and songwriter Koko-Jean Davis recalls that baptism of fire on stage.
"It was the first time my mother heard me sing!" she exclaims with undisguised affection for that woman "who at 40 left her comfortable life in Barcelona and moved to Central America to study medicine, from where she later ended up in Mozambique, where she continued to heal people and adopted me. She is my great inspiration."
Voice and face of The Excitemements during their first decade of journey and, currently, fronting Koko-Jean and the Tonics, the artist started her musical career very young. "At 16 I recorded a track with some DJs that had some success in the Mozambican club scene, imagine the high at that age of going to a club and seeing the dance floor full of people dancing to your song!" But Koko didn't consider making a living from it.
"I studied at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, with the idea of dedicating myself to communication or teaching." But music pursued her. "I ended up being in charge of singing the American anthem at my graduation party. An honor, but also a great responsibility."
--- And when did you decide to dedicate yourself to music professionally?
The singer sips a short drink. "That was much later, when I was already established here, in Barcelona," she replies.
Closing circles to open others
"After university I lived for a while in Rio de Janeiro until I ended up in Barcelona for a brief stay, which ultimately became definitive, because I'm very happy here." For Koko, that arrival in the city was like closing a circle opened many years before by her mother, who had left her home to end up living in Mozambique. "And now there I was, her Mozambican daughter establishing herself in Barcelona."
Despite the certainties and routines that a desk job gave her, or perhaps precisely for this reason, the parishioner wanted to get to know the urban music scene in depth. "I went to concerts, participated in jam sessions like the WTF at Jamboree, and in the end, I put out an ad offering myself as a soul and R&B singer." That's when Adrià Gual and Daniel Segura contacted her for the band they were forming, The Excitements, and it quickly became clear that it was working. "They showed me a video of Sharon Jones and asked me if I was capable of doing that. Of course, I was capable, but in my own way, being myself and not a mere imitator!"
The time came to open a new life circle: to let go of her anchors to consider living from music. And in the end, she decided yes, "because the answer to our big questions is already within us," and she fully immersed herself with The Excitements. Thus began what she herself defines as "a long tour of more than ten years, where I learned a lot of things, where I toughened up, and which I ended up living like a marriage sustained more by its inertia than by passion." This she transferred to her parallel band, The Tonics.
"When I left The Excitements and focused on my band, it was like a divorce. Like leaving your husband for your lover." Koko was shedding her skin again. This overflowing fire now culminates in the release of the band's second album, Love child. "The title has nothing to do with The Supremes' song, but with the act of giving birth to music, songs that were hard for me to write. It's a very deep album."
Recovering pride
The artist fiercely defends a Barcelona that is her home, her abode, "the place where I want to be, although I confess I have my flirtations with Madrid," she laughs.
In love with its history and the city's fighting and tenacious character, she is attracted to everything that lies beneath the surface, between walls, "the layers of its history that we don't see, but that are there, in the memory of its streets and its people." Perhaps that's why she notes with some sadness "that Barcelonans are giving up. They are no longer proud of their city, they are letting it be sold, and I feel bad because this is the place that has given me everything I needed to give my best."
"Barcelonans are giving up. They are no longer proud of their city"--- This conversation is also giving its best. I invite you to the next gin and tonic!
Koko-Jean Davis exults, while following the rhythm of Amy Winehouse's Tears dry on their own, which fills the night atmosphere of the Bar. "¡Yeah! ---she exclaims---I'm going out for a smoke and I'll be back for that gin and tonic."
--- Hey, doesn't smoking harm your voice?
--- All the great singers in history have smoked… but, anyway, I'm trying to quit once and for all. Let's see if one of these days… --- she laughs.