💕Coco Elysses didley bow, percussion, vocals

💕Alexis Lombre keyboards, vocals

💕JoVia Armstrong cajon set, electronics, vocals

💕Nicole Mitchell flute, electronics, vocals

Black Earth SWAY, founded by award winning creative flutist Nicole Mitchell, sings liberation through Afro-Folk-Futurism. BE SWAY is a celebration of open spirits and sisterhood and is a platform for new mythologies in Black American storytelling in a liquid melding of funk, blues, experimental jazz, and more.  Putting the “fun” back in music, each member brings her songs that seek realness, joy and honesty in their free expression.

The multigenerational sister friends of BE SWAY all have creative and family connections to Chicago and its great cultural legacy. As one of the newest groups of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), they traverse the endless possibilities of Great Black Music. 

BE SWAY is unique in that it showcases the storytelling work of Coco Elysses who modernizes the didley bow (an African American folk instrument). Percussionist JoVia Armstrong plays an original cajon set (a box drum with cymbals). Alexis Lombre effortlessly handles the dual roles of bass and piano between a Nord keyboard and acoustic piano. Nicole Mitchell brings otherworldly sounds with her processed flute sounds and electronics.  Together these sonic ingredients are bake up Afro-Folk-Futurism. 

BE SWAY started in 2021, and in the last two years we have brought joy to audiences at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, Harvard University, Sao Paulo's SESC Jazz, SF Jazz, Dartmouth College, Pittsburgh's City of Asylum, Chicago's Promontory and Jazzowa Jesien (Katowice, Poland). 

Outside of BE SWAY, each member has an outstanding career as a composer and performer with her own projects. 

Daringly innovative percussionist, producer, composer, and educator JoVia Armstrong, is a well-traveled musician, a Sabian endorsee, and the founder of Eunoia Society. Detroit-bred, JoVia developed her early career after moving to Chicago, and eventually joined the legendary Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) as an important new member. While in Chicago, she continued to straddle a continued impact on the Detroit scene. As a percussionist, JoVia has performed with El DeBarge, Rahsaan Patterson, Frank McComb, Res, Omar, The Impressions, Malian musicians Ballaké Sissoko & Babani Kone, Joe Vasconcellos, and Martha Reeves. JoVia self-released her debut album, Fuzzy Blue Robe Chronicles, in 2009, of which she was the composer, producer, and percussionist. From Fuzzy Blue, her song “Gullah Geechee'' received notable attention and was reproduced by renowned Chicago House/Detroit Techno DJ Theo Parrish. As a winner of the Black Women in Jazz Awards for 2015, JoVia has performed throughout Europe, Canada and the U.S. Having toured with world-acclaimed Les Nubians, Nicole Mitchell’s genre-colliding Black Earth Ensemble, Chicago soul group JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound, and Detroit-based world/jazz group Musique Noir. She served as the producer and composer of  JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound’s latest EP Red Black and Blue, (April 2018) and is often the composer for Musique Noir. An award-winning educator, she received the 3Arts Siragusa Foundation Artist Award in 2011, having worked as a mentor and teaching artist teaching theory, music production, and instrumental lessons for aspiring beatmakers and songwriters. JoVia is an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Virginia.

Coco Elysses is a renaissance woman: a multi-instrumentalist, producer, conductor, composer, beat maker, musician, actress, voice-over artist, screenwriter, doula and poet. Currently the Chairwoman of the AACM, she works to uplift the legacy of African American culture and folklore through her storytelling and performance on the didley bow, a one stringed guitar, a Black folk instrument invented during the times of early America. She has performed internationally in numerous festivals including: The San Francisco Jazz Festival, The Havana Jazz Festival, Hyde Park Jazz Festival, the Frankfurt Jazz Festival, Made in Chicago Jazz Festival in Poznan, Poland and the Insolent Noise Festival in Pisa, Italy. Coco was also featured in the book, Black Women and Music: More than The Blues. Her discography includes The Best of the Miyumi Project, Skylanding- The Music of Yoko Ono, Nicole Mitchell’s Africa Rising and Resurrection Suite with Ben LaMar Gaye & Carlos Pride. As an actress, she has won the ALTA Award and Jeff Award for Best Original Music in a Play, and was a featured musician in the critically claimed FOX TV drama Empire.

Alexis Lombre is a Chicago jazz musician born and raised. From a young age, the pianist channeled her fair share of jazz greats — from McCoy Tyner to Herbie Hancock. Her musical mission is to keep the ‘Soul’ in music alive. As JazzTimes puts it “Lombre says realized early on that by refusing to be constrained by convention— whether so-called “jazz” or otherwise—she’d be honoring, rather than defiling, the rich heritage she’d come to embrace.” She has also played with internationally known musicians such as: Nicole Mitchell, Jamila Woods, the AACM Great Black Music Ensemble, Laurin Talese, Junius Paul, Makaya McCraven, Donald Harrison, Bobby Watson, Buster Williams, Wadada Leo Smith, Dee Alexander, J Moss, Cece Peniston, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and Nona Hendrix.

Nicole Mitchell is an award-winning creative flutist, composer, conceptualist, bandleader and educator. Mitchell emerged from Chicago’s innovative music scene in the late 90s, as a co-founder of the all-woman group Samana, a member of the David Boykin Expanse and a member of Hamid Drake’s Soundscapes with Glenda Zahra Baker. Mitchell’s music celebrates contemporary and experimental African American culture. Before emerging in Chicago, her entry into improvisation was in San Diego with Najite Agindotan’s Afrobeat band, Une Igede. Mitchell’s critically acclaimed Chicago-based Black Earth Ensemble (BEE) has been her primary compositional laboratory with which she has performed at festivals and art venues throughout Europe, Canada, and the US. The former first woman president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Mitchell composes for contemporary ensembles of varied instrumentation and size (from solo to orchestra and big band) while incorporating improvisation and a wide aesthetic expression. She celebrated for having developed a unique improvisational language and having been repeatedly awarded “Top Flutist of the Year” by Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association (2010-2023). Mitchell’s mentors have included James Newton, Anthony Davis, Edward Wilkerson Jr, Arveeayl Ra, Maia, Shanta Nurullah, Anthony Braxton and Brenda Jones. Some of the many musicians she has collaborated with include Tomeka Reid, Chad Taylor, Moor Mother, JoVia Armstrong, Mike Reed, Joshua White. Joelle Leandre, Ballake Sissoko, Roscoe Mitchell and Myra Melford. Mitchell is the recipient of the Herb Alpert Award, Chicago’s 3Arts Award, and the Doris Duke Award. She is a United States Artist Fellow. As a composer, she has been commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Music NOW, Bang on a Can, French Ministry of Culture, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Art Institute of Chicago, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America, the Chicago Jazz Festival, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and the Chicago Sinfonietta. Nicole is a Professor of Music at the University of Virginia.