Y The Ghost
I’m Jacoby Elliott (aka Y the Ghost) and I’m 27, from Kansas City, and currently based in Colorado.
I’m excited by anything that invites me and others to look at the world and the human experience from a different and higher perspective. Other musicians, filmmakers, and authors on philosophy have always been my biggest inspirations. I’m also really excited by the positive momentum around my new single and feel a lot of hope for the places music, film, and storytelling will guide me to in the future. I’m currently part of Tina Turner’s “Beyond Music,” which is a music initiative based in Switzerland seeking to connect musicians from all around the world to each other in order to transcend limits and foster collaborative creativity. The future isn’t crystal clear in terms of what exactly will happen with any of that, but I’m leaning into it all with as much gratitude, humility, and presence as I can bring to it.
There’s something that happens when I’m performing or creating that makes me feel the freest. There have been major blocks in my heart and psyche that I’ve had to push through in order to reach that place, but it’s always such a victorious moment to transcend those limitations and internalized projections. When I first started performing it almost felt like I was in a straitjacket that paralyzed me from really taking wing, and every time I’ve performed or allowed others to witness my work I loosen the jacket a little more and gain a little more freedom. So much of my work thus far has been about letting go of what I’m not, and making space for something more expansive. In order to really tap into that, though, I have to sort of go out of the body and into the stars. It has to be from an aerial view; less literal and more abstract.
When I wrote Is That Too Deep? it was at a time when the surface of things just wasn’t doing it for me anymore. There’s a lethargy about it that very much captures how I felt at the time. I felt this pressure from the world to go out and dominate, but I just knew deep down that I wasn’t going to bring in or spread more love by operating that way. That’s all I really wanted — and that desire can be scary when it’s so at odds with the culture we’re in. The burst of energy towards the end, even though it’s expressing a heavy sense of disappointment, is actually a sign of hope. It’s sort of that light bulb going off, like “I don’t have to accept this power-driven, deprived perspective on love that so many of us have internalized. I’m not buying it. There’s gotta be something deeper and more expansive than that.” And the next single sort of picks up there.
It’s been exciting to watch this song reach more people than I ever have before. I worked hard to cast as wide a net as possible on my own, and I’m just happy that people are connecting with it the way they are. I still believe the best is yet to come.
I’m a little hesitant to speak on the future lately, simply because I wanna leave room for better ideas to manifest than what I may have in mind right now. The next collaborations for Beyond Music should be starting within the next month or so, so I want to make plenty of space for that to become whatever it’s meant to become. For my own music, I will say that I’ll be continuing to integrate new music into a visual experience, with each release building upon the last. I’m focused a lot more on quality than quantity or frequency. I want every release to make the biggest impact possible, and I want each experience to stand the test of time.
Photo credits: RMG Photography
Still frames from ‘Is That Too Deep?’
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