We were lucky to catch up with Cory Tauwoo recently and have shared our conversation below.

Cory, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

The act of songwriter took me a long time to really harness. Everything I needed was inside of me, at a very simple and primitive level, but the language to define the nuances of the space took me a long time to recognize and develop. I played a good amount of instruments and wrote a good amount of songs, but it came down to infatuation and luck that drove that space. The act of songwriting for me as an individual, hearing my voice for what it was, seeing my emotional makeup and experimenting with language in that space, slowly became the purpose of my writing. The subject or instruments started to lose appeal, but getting the feeling right became such a sensitive and expansive space. Today I feel less of a musician or an artist, and more of a creative. Thinking in those broader terms allows me to not feel stuck to self definitions of identity, which can limit accessibility, and also opens doors to listen to other creatives and have stronger collaborations.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi my name is Cory Tauwoo, my pronouns are he/him. I am an Oakland based songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist. My work draws inspiration from West African, Middle Eastern, and Indian rhythms as well as artists like Radiohead, Photay, James Blake, and Patrick Watson.

Through my creative practice I am interested in exploring the vulnerability and fragility of the human spirit, as a way of connecting the deeply personal with the universal and the grief of the natural world.

I am the son of a father who is a professional keyboardist / pianist, and a mother who is a graphic designer and creative mind. My interest in music was a gifted perspective from my father, my interest in songwriting stemmed from how my mother interacted creatively with the world. I bopped around for a while before realizing my given resources as a songwriter at about age 18. I hold a lot of capacity for emotional intuition, am an empath, and pull writings from pondering perched upon the cliff side of the void.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

As I continue to write and write and write, I’m finding myself less attached to the physicality of songs, and more attached to process and the catharsis that comes with writing, and the emotional intuition that is gifted in translating feelings outside of my body into a song. What drives me is the search for what feels to be true. In a world that is constantly expanding, that stimulus is ever shifting, but I find my perspective to be refining and narrowing. The search for my voice in a sea of perspective and influence, what makes me unique, what duty I have to others in the telling of what I find.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I played with a band called Eyes on the Shore from 2013-2017. My dominant role was the singer, but also was a drummer and a guitarist at times. The project was a very serious effort at commercial success as a musician. It took almost all of my life force to fuel it forward, draining a lot of my individual perspective for the sake of a collective push. That effort harmed my relationship, contorted me internally, and after the project split, I wasn’t sure if I could continue on with music. I didn’t know who I was, and what the point was of existing in music. I had failed after thousands and thousands of hours applied towards my “profession”. I fully hit the bottom and just welled out for a while, but soon enough after, the itch to create returned. I started to write, and wrote A LOT. I didn’t put pressure on finishing anything in a polished / commercial sense, and slowly but surely started to feel reconnected to my spirit. I was listening to the ether inside of me again: the fingers reaching out into the unknown and asking what and why. That low point truly evolved me. I’m so glad it did and am continuing to build off of that momentum. Allowing the strong perspective of self to determine my strokes on the canvas, my creative partnerships, and the direction in which I am applying pressure.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tauwoo.com
• Instagram: @_tauwoo

Image Credits

Anna-alexia Basile, Anthony Kerrigan, Sothear Nuon