Danielia Cotton

Born on September 24, 1967, Danielia Cotton delivers commanding vocals and crafts songs that weave together blues, jazz, rock, R&B, and gospel. Her mother, Wenonah Brooks, sang jazz professionally, as did aunts Jeannie Brooks and Carol Brooks-Meyners. Her father played no role in her life; she spent her childhood in Hopewell, New Jersey, attending Hopewell Valley Central High School as one of only seven African-American students there.

She began playing guitar at age twelve and performed with her mother and aunts in the gospel ensemble Brooks Ensemble Plus. At home she absorbed her mother’s deep affinity for jazz and gospel, while school fostered an affinity for hard rock acts such as AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and Judas Priest; later she discovered Black rock artists including Lenny Kravitz and Living Colour.

Cotton studied at the New Jersey School of Performing Arts, earned a full scholarship to Bennington College in Vermont for music, and trained at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, crediting her acting work with sharpening her singing.

After her studies she settled in New York City and built a reputation on the club circuit. Hip Shake Records released her debut six-song EP in 2004. She formed a close working relationship with producer and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Salem, previously active in Marc Anthony Thompson’s Chocolate Genius project; Salem produced her first full-length album, Small White Town, issued in 2005, its title drawn from her Hopewell upbringing.

When Philadelphia’s WXPN-FM named her an artist to watch, fan support in that city grew, prompting her move from New York. After parting ways with Hip Shake Records she released Rare Child in 2008 on her own Cotton Town label. The live EP Live Child followed in 2009.

She rejoined Kevin Salem to record The Gun in Your Hand, released in 2012. In 2014 she issued the covers collection The Real Book, featuring songs ranging from the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” to Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” That year also brought the six-song live studio EP Woodstock, recorded in Woodstock, New York, the town that had become her home. In spring 2016 she released the digital singles “A Prayer” and “Afraid to Burn.”