Mariposa will love Coco and her 'Accidental Choirs'

Folk singer Coco Love Alcorn stepped away from the performing side of music for about five years. It was from that hiatus that daughter Ellie came along, and also a time of happy accidents.

“I set my guitar aside,” the Owen Sound-based artist tells Barrie Today, “and recorded tracks of myself (just vocally) using a five-track looped tape recorder.”

The result was some stunning over-dubbed harmonies… kind of a one-person choir, if you will. In the fall of 2014 she released a YouTube video of herself performing one of these first looper-layered songs, The River.

“The choir covered the tracks before the album came out,” she says.

It’s tracks like those which are included on her latest CD, Wonderland, from which Alcorn will perform at this summer’s Mariposa Folk Festival at Orillia’s Tudhope Park, songs that “inspire the human spirit… (and are) connected to energy and inspiration.”

It’s appropriate that Coco has her compass pointed toward Mariposa and other festivals throughout the country, as her music can’t be pinned down to one specific genre.

“I’d call what I do a mash of global music, folks, jazz…” but never dwelling in one area of music for too long at one time. “I’m inspired by lots of genres.”

And though she bears travel stickers of festivals hither and yon, Mariposa holds a special place in her heart. “I’ve been here once before. I’m not sure when, maybe six years ago.

“Folk festivals are also about connection and community. They’re about intermingling backstage and eating in the same mess table with other artists, and round-robin workshops, and performing so that the audience feels in the moment.”

It should come as no surprise that Coco’s discovery with the looper has brought her in touch with choirs from all over the place, with whom she has collaborated and recorded. If you pick up Wonderland, you will likely hear some choirs of whom you have heard yourself.

“I might pull together a Mariposa Pop-up Choir,” Alcorn says with a laugh.

Originally from Nova Scotia, Coco has traveled extensively, calling Toronto and Vancouver home before settling in Owen Sound. But there is a sense – however hackneyed – that wherever she sings and reaches audience is where she’s most at home.

You’ll find Coco Love Alcorn at the 57th edition of the Mariposa Folk Festival which takes over Tudhope Park in Orillia Friday through Sunday, July 7-9. For more information, click http://www.mariposafolk.com/