multimedia artist Jacoby Elliott shares how God, and dance music, brought healing after a terrible grief.
By Jacoby Elliott
I have a core memory of being picked up and wildly spun in circles by my cousin Ami on a crowded dance floor. She was wearing a white dress and had just gotten married. I was around seven years old with short, spiky blonde-tipped hair. At the reception, I had performed the choreography to Jump5’s “Spinnin’ Around”—immediately prompting her to lift me off the ground in an adoring embrace as soon as it was over. I’ll always remember flying through the air with butterflies in my stomach after performing one of my favorite songs for people I loved and who loved me, a song that to this day still transports me back to that feeling.
I likely inherited an attraction to dance-infused sounds from my mom, who, sadly, passed away in 2023 but whose memory lives on in me through dance music. It’s a bond that we shared and that still animates my relationship to music. Her enthusiastic response to “a good beat” likely informed my own neural pathways regarding what makes music exciting. Our family road trips were loud and groovy, with 80s/90s gospel and funk CDs on heavy rotation.
My dad was a preacher and my mom worked in ministry for many years. Mom had a love for hip-hop infused gospel music, often leading and performing in dance routines for our church that were choreographed to uplift and encourage. She infused every room she entered with an electricity that was contagious, and she brought people together in a way that was fun and brought glory to God.
I fell away from faith in high school, but I never stopped loving synthpop or dance music. There eventually came a time in young adulthood when I became aware of a longing inside of me that was too big for anything in my current life of parties, clubs, and warehouses to hold. It had haunted me ever since I drifted; however, I had no paradigm to even conceptualize that it might be God tugging on my heart.
The closest thing I could reach for at the time was beauty, and I made a conscious decision to pursue beauty and to make it a priority in my life—one that was worth making sacrifices for. In time I would become interested in goodness and cultivating a spiritual life, and then at last I was ready for the truth as revealed in Jesus Christ. Now I’ll be unraveling this truth for the rest of my life, and then on into eternity.
This prodigal reunion with my Creator was happening at the same time as my mom was slowly being covered over by a strange fog of darkness, addiction, and health issues—sort of the way clouds cast a shadow over the ground as a storm is rolling in. I now recognize that this was a spirit of death closing in on her. I had never lost anyone close or dear to me before, so it was a completely alien phenomenon to me.
Before her passing I had already personally reaffirmed my faith in Jesus, started reading scripture again, and began searching for Christian community—but it was like a divine secret I was holding close to my chest while I tried to make sense of what was happening in order to even articulate it to others.
Poet Nayyirah Waheed once wrote, “My mother was my first country—the first place I ever lived.” To witness my own mother—who not only was a vibrant woman who laughed from her core and full of energy, but was my very first pillar of orientation for existence itself—eventually be swallowed up by darkness and tragedy was traumatic on a level I likely still cannot fully comprehend. I was the optimist who believed that goodness always prevails in the end, that “if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” The demonic image of her sunken face hooked up to a breathing machine absolutely broke me and brought me to my knees. I’ve never wept like I did in that hospital room. At the same time, I likely never could have fathomed the death Christ entered into on the cross for us to the degree I do now had I not witnessed looking into that awful pit up close. Death is utterly hideous. And He overcame that in His resurrection.
Now, dance music for me involves looking death in the face and choosing life. It’s a defiance against despair, a force that propels me to “press on.” The love within the life of the Trinity is itself a dance that overflowed to the point that it spilled over into the dynamic, moving creation that birthed us—suspended above the void of nothingness that our Maker hovered over and decided on existence for us instead. Dancing is an embodiment of the truth that God chose movement over stagnation for his creation before the foundation of the world.
Are there still theological considerations to grapple with, such as the proper place of technology in the Kingdom as well as the cultural associations which often entangle dance music with lifestyles of sin and rebellion against God? Certainly, and I am dependent on the Lord for His wisdom. But at the same time, this style of music has already long occupied a more wholesome space in my life within childhood memories and personal experience.
It accompanies me when I walk and exercise, when I work from home, when I drive in the car, when I dream, ponder and create. It’s an energetic stimulant that need not operate dependently on the context of club culture or lyrical themes of sin. More importantly, it honors the memory of my mother and lifts my gaze to Heaven—transforming a story of tragedy into one of faith.
“You have turned my mourning into dancing; You have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, That my soul may sing praise to You and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever.”
— Psalm 30:11-12
jACOBY’S MIX TAPE
To supplement this essay, I put together a mixtape of synthpop music curated to gradually move the listener from mourning and into dancing. Some of it is faith-based, some of it is secular, but all of it is filled with spiritual longing and encouragement. Each song transitions seamlessly into the next, with portions of the Psalms threading it all together. May this accompany you through the cold and dark days of winter and—if you ever find yourself in a place of mourning or yearning this Advent—may it meet you in that depth and beckon you on towards embodied hope for the promises of God.
Jacoby Elliott is a multimedia creator in Colorado Springs with a passion for creative work ranging from music to graphic design to video. He is the Director of Communications at International Anglican Church, a leader of IAC’s Art + Faith ministry, and an active participant in the Anselm Society.
A NOTE TO READERS:
Why read about music? Why not just listen to it? While nothing can suffice but to experience a work of art (like a piece of music), we can orient ourselves to be ready to engage art. So, in this little corner of Anselm, we occasionally will be presenting to you reviews of a featured musician and his or her work. The ultimate goal, of course, is to enjoy what they bring to the renaissance of the Christian Imagination.
