CocoRosie: Американский музыкальный дуэт сестёр Касади

American musical group

CocoRosie is an American musical group formed in 2003 by sisters Sierra Rose "Rosie" and Bianca Leilani "Coco" Casady. The group's music has been described as folktronica, freak folk and "New Weird America", and incorporates elements of pop, blues, opera, electronica, and hip hop. The group has released seven studio albums, La Maison de Mon Rêve (2004), Noah's Ark (2005), The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn (2007), Grey Oceans (2010), Tales of a GrassWidow (2013), Heartache City (2015), and Put the Shine On (2020), and two EPs, Beautiful Boyz (2004) and Coconuts, Plenty of Junk Food (2009). They released their sixth album Heartache City on their own record label, Lost Girl Records. Originally a duo, the group was formed when Bianca, who was living in New York City at the time, made an impromptu visit to Sierra at her Paris apartment, reconnecting with her for the first time in ten years. The sisters began creating music together, singing over instrumentals produced using a combination of traditional instruments and found objects, most notably children's toys. They later expanded to a group and added various backing musicians, including a bassist, keyboardist, beatboxer, and synth player. CocoRosie has performed and toured in North America, South America, and at many prominent European venues and festivals such as the Olympia, the Grand Rex, the Royal Concertgebouw, Pukkelpop, and Lowlands Festival. In 2009, music magazine Better Propaganda named CocoRosie the 16th most influential artist of the 2000s.

Sierra Casady was born on June 9, 1980, in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and Bianca Casady on March 27, 1982, in Hilo, Hawaii. Their parents divorced when Sierra was four and Bianca was two and the self identified "part Native American" Chalmers was born in Madison, West Virginia. Chalmers nicknamed Sierra "Rosie" and Bianca "Coco" from which CocoRosie takes its name. Their mother's partner was the New Age spiritual leader and Native American impostor Brooke Medicine Eagle, whom Bianca has said "carried [her] in a papoose around sacred Anasazi grounds" as a child. The Casady sisters have claimed their maternal grandfather, who they have never met, was Cherokee and that their mother believed her nomadic tendencies were because "her Syrian ancestors must have had a lot of Gypsy in them." Bianca has discussed her mother's ethnic background by saying "Nowadays, who would want to be white? But back then, in farm country, anything other than button nosed blonde didn't fly." Their childhood has been described as "bizarre" and "nomadic". They moved almost yearly, living in Hawaii, Arizona, California and New Mexico, and frequently changed schools. who came from an Iowa farming family, In a 2007 interview, discussing the track lyrics of The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, Bianca briefly mentioned that as child she "would burn ants and hunt rabbits" with Sierra, and that on the album is "talk about family members and our experiences It’s not about what we have been doing, more major experiences, like moments from our childhood." The Legend of the Rainbow Warriors is New Age fakelore and the Casady sisters have been criticized for "race baiting" and "naïve and insensitive appropriation of Native American mythology" due to their use of Native American themes in their works. The Casady sisters' mother, Christina Chalmers, died in January 2017 during the production of CocoRosie's seventh album, Put the Shine On, eleven days after providing backing vocals for the track "Ruby Red", which is about her life.

Sierra has received classical opera training in Rome, Paris, and New York City. At age 17, she moved to Rome to be privately tutored by Rosana Staffi. In 2000, after having lived in New York City for two years Casady cheated to gain entrance to the Conservatoire, stating "I pretended I could sight read when I couldn't." She also studied at the Conservatoire Rachmaninoff in Paris. During this period she had no contact with Bianca, who by 2002 was living in Brooklyn According to a 2007 Clash interview, the sisters had "hardly spoke a word to each other for ten years" at that point, with Bianca saying they "had seen each other a few times, but abstained from speaking to each other. It was less of children being split up and more of us choosing not to connect." In a 2009 interview, Bianca stated that the decision to make music was also impromptu, and that after reuniting they had been "doing a lot of photography and started to just sort of document our daily adventures recording was just sort of a natural progression of that at no point were we, you know, aware of the goal of making a record we intuitively really kind of stuck to that format without knowing it, like by making twelve songs and kind of thinking of it as that structure." The album's cover, a drawing by Bianca of three unicorns having sex while one of them vomits drops corresponding to the color spectrum, was selected by The Guardian and Pitchfork Media as one of the worst album covers of all time. In 2005, Bianca Casady was in a relationship with Devendra Banhart, with Banhart living with Casady and her mother Christina at Christina's farm in Saintes Maries de la Mer, a Romani village in southern France. Casady's relationship with Banhart ended in 2006. Banhart's 2007 album Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon detailed his break up with Casady. In 2006, Sierra started a side project, Metallic Falcons, with friend Matteah Baim. The project is signed to Voodoo Eros Records, a new label started by Bianca with business partner Melissa Shimkovitz. Bianca also opened the Voodoo Eros Museum Of Nice Items, an art gallery and performance space in New York City (123 Ludlow St) most recently home to an exhibition of Bianca's art Red Bone Slim VS. Itself: an Exhibition of Drawings.

CocoRosie's third full length studio album, The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, was released on April 10, 2007. It was produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson, Björk's longtime collaborator. In May 2007, while touring in support of The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, the band was involved in an incident which resulted in the cancellation of the remainder of the North American leg of the tour. No official explanation was released; vague and unconfirmed reports claimed that unidentified members of the band were arrested and deported while crossing the Canada–US border.

On May 13, 2008, CocoRosie released a new single entitled "God Has a Voice, She Speaks Through Me". The song was released digitally and as a 7" picture disc single (limited to 3000 pieces). The B side of the 7" features a short and untitled song, which merely consists of noises. Though the picture on the B side of the vinyl has lyrics from the song "Hairnet Paradise", which was previously only performed live, the actual song on the recording is very different. The duo spent much of 2008 writing and recording in various locations such as New York city, Réunion, Paris and Berlin where they also teamed up with artist Neda Sanai that is the spoken word voice on the song "R. I. P Burn Face".

In 2009, CocoRosie's relationship with Touch and Go Records became unclear. A self released EP entitled Coconuts, Plenty of Junk Food was made available for sale exclusively at CocoRosie shows on June 3, 2009.

CocoRosie signed with Sub Pop records in 2010. Their fourth full length album, Grey Oceans, was released on May 11, 2010.

On June 5, 2012, CocoRosie released their double A Side 7" single, "We Are On Fire", with Touch and Go Records. The cover art for the new single was a Twin Rivers collaboration between Bianca and Jesse Hazelip. Their fifth album, Tales of a GrassWidow, was released in the United States on May 27, 2013, on the City Slang record label.

On February 6, 2015, the group confirmed on Twitter that they were working on a new album. Bianca later confirmed on Twitter that she was working on an upcoming solo album. In August 2015, CocoRosie announced that their album, Heartache City was set for release in late 2015. The group also released a behind the scenes video on their YouTube account of themselves in the studio recording two songs for the album, "Hairnet Paradise" and "Big and Black." On July 10, 2015, CocoRosie released a live version of a new song entitled "Heartache City" on their SoundCloud account, with the studio version to be released on their upcoming sixth album. Shortly after, CocoRosie posted the full album to stream on their SoundCloud page. It was premiered on The Fader. The duo also released the music video for new song "Lost Girls" on Facebook. The album was eventually released in October 2015. In October 2015, Bianca announced details of her solo project, Bianca Casady and the C. i. A, also featuring Takuya Nakamura (bass guitar and trumpet), Doug Wieselman (clarinet and e guitar), Lacy Lancaster (drums), Jean Marc Ruellan (piano) and Bino Sauitzvy (dance). CocoRosie have been frequent collaborators of American avant garde theatre director Robert Wilson, composing scores to his award winning international productions including "Peter Pan" (2013) at the Berliner Ensemble, "Pushkin's Fairy Tales" (2015) in Moscow, "Edda" (2017) at the Norske Theater in Oslo and "The Jungle Book" (2019) in Luxembourg. They have also performed at The Watermill Center.

On January 17, 2017, the group released the single "Smoke 'em Out" featuring Anohni, a protest song against the presidential election of Donald Trump, while also confirming that they had started working on their next album, Put the Shine On.

An article in the April 5, 2007 issue of Czech magazine HIS Voice about The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn mentioned a previously unknown body of work, created by the Casady sisters, titled Word to the Crow. Shortly after, on April 13, an article about CocoRosie on Czech news website Aktuálně claimed that on the day before the release of La Maison de Mon Rêve, the sisters recorded an "improvised rap album" of the same title. It is unknown where the claim originated. On May 3, 2009, Portuguese music blog mojorising claimed that the sisters recorded "a hip hop album" titled Word to the Crow "just a few days before" recording La Maison de Mon Rêve, and later on May 21, the official website of the Byblos International Festival published an article claiming that the sisters had "completed a hip hop recording" of the same title prior to recording La Maison de Mon Rêve. On April 17, 2014, the claim was added to CocoRosie's "artist description" on Last. fm and on June 19, 2018, All American Entertainment website and booking agency AAE Music added the claim to their description of the group. Despite a mild degree of circulation, no evidence to support the existence of the album has surfaced, and the Casady sisters have never spoken about such an album. The track "The Moon asked the Crow" from the 2010 album Grey Oceans, described by critics as "a surreal mixture of classical tinkling accompanied by a juddering hip hop bounce" and "baroque piano noodling with a thumping, body moving hip hop beat", as well as having "hip hop elements", a "moody, hip hop inherited boom boom clap beat" and a "catchy hip hoppy beat",

CocoRosie has composed film scores for the 2005 French film Frankie and the 2007 German film Haus der Wünsche (international: Paperbird). The track "Candyland" was used in the 2007 film Anna M The tracks "Bear Hides and Buffalo" and "Bloody Twins" are used in the 2008 gay zombie film Otto; or Up with Dead People by Bruce LaBruce. The tracks "Miracle", "Beautiful Boys", and "Honey or Tar" are used in the 2011 documentary Whores' Glory by Michael Glawogger. Sound illustrator Frédéric Sanchez used the tracks "Brazilian Sun", "Good Friday", and "Not for Sale" on the soundtrack for Miuccia Prada's Spring 2006 show, titling the piece "Coco Rosie Through the Looking Glass". The track "The Moon asked the Crow" was used in the Milan Fashion Week SS10 Runway soundtrack. The track "Werewolf" is sung repeatedly throughout the Swedish rendition of Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Royal Dramatic Theatre.

In August 2021, the Casady family house burned down in a forest fire. Bianca stated that "The fire took everything, our family history in a material sense, all of our mother’s artwork and possessions, all of our family photographs, our collection of musical instruments and recording equipment, our costumes and on and on " Although insurance covered the cost of rebuilding the house, it did not cover other expenses such as the cost of the music studio or musical instruments, so the Casady sisters launched a GoFundMe to cover costs.

Radical feminism is a theme within Bianca and Sierra's music and art. They have vocally criticized patriarchal religion, particularly Christianity and Islam, which they refer to as "sky god religions". They reject criticism of their anti religious views as political correctness, saying that cultural and racial sensitivity can be a "big threat to feminism" and that they value women's rights more than freedom of religion. Bianca Casady has said that transgender identity is a theme of CocoRosie. She rejects the term "TERF" as misogynistic. Bianca Casady has signed the "Musicians for Palestine" statement in solidarity with the Palestinian movement.