Harp player Christine Elise was roaming a Wynnewood grocery store when she spotted rapper Küf Knotz between the produce aisles. She decided to take a chance. Christine had seen Küf perform months earlier at a Beyond the Bars fundraiser, where his inspiring lyrics and open-ended musical attitude left her thinking, "I wouldn't mind being part of something like that." Now, in the middle of a grocery store, she approached him with an unusual proposition: "If you ever need a harpist..."

Months passed, and Christine received a surprise phone call from Küf three hours before soundcheck at Underground Arts. It was a moment of transformation for Christine, a classically trained musician who had never performed in a venue like this. Her music therapy background—the art of listening, matching, and being present— helped Christine shine in this new territory. That night, improvising her way through the set, she instantly became half of one of Philadelphia's most unique musical partnerships.

Several years and three albums later, Küf Knotz and Christine Elise have solidified their unique combination of neo-soul, Native Tongues-inspired hip hop, and Philly tradition. Their latest album, Hypnagogia, represents the full flowering of this collaborative vision as Küf's conscious hip-hop poetry dances with Christine's shimmering harp arrangements. The duo is also active with their organization Higher Grounds Music, bringing their healing-centered artistry to schools, community centers, and therapeutic spaces across the country.

Lawrence Peryer recently hosted Küf Knotz and Christine Elise on the Spotlight On podcast. The three discussed many topics, including the importance of music therapy, why hip hop with a harp isn't that odd, the challenges of getting a good live sound mix, and the pair's recent Alice In Wonderland moment. The transcribed interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Away from That Classical Box

Lawrence Peryer: To me, being a harp player brings up a lot of preconceived notions, and one of them is a lot of education and training. Could you talk a little bit about the educational part of your musical background? Are you classically trained?

Christine Elise: Many people don't realize that the harp is very similar to the piano. If you open up an upright piano and see all the strings, that's pretty much the inside of a piano—that's the harp. So many harp teachers who practice classically won't take on students if they don't have proficient piano skills.

I started playing piano at seven, the instrument I had that vigorous practice on. I always reserved the harp for improvisation and creativity to get away from that classical box, which allowed me to think of the harp not from a classical perspective but a more percussive, emotional perspective.

In college, I practiced piano for six hours daily and only used the harp expressively with friends, improvising, sometimes in sessions. This kept my connection with the harp magical, which I have felt over time is lost if you vigorously practice something over and over again.

Lawrence: It's fascinating to hear you sought that improvisational element. Was it just about having a place to play and a release valve from the rigidity of classical?

Christine: There was this cellist named David Darling who created a program called Music for People. The program was about teaching how to use music by listening and not so much through theory. There were workshops around the country, and they were offered through my college.

When I was in that program, I dove into improvisation. At that point, I didn't want to use the piano—I wanted something fresh without having difficulty switching. I wouldn't have been so open-minded if it wasn't for that program. The concept is "no wrong notes, play what you hear, hear what you play." That helped me become a good listener of music and improvise.

Lawrence: Is it safe to say that your career path before connecting with Küf was more about being in the music therapy world?

Christine: Yeah, I was a full-time music therapist. The first time I ever performed in a venue was when Küf called me about three hours before soundcheck. It was the biggest night in the States to play, the night before Thanksgiving, and he said, "Hey, can you sit in on this show?" I had to say yes because I knew someone else would fill in if I didn't.

Lawrence: Some other harp player? Küf said, "Oh, my regular harp player couldn't make it tonight..." [laughter]

Christine: So that was the first time I played in a music venue, when Küf said, "Come play."

Photo by Jovell Rennie

The Live Hip-Hop Movement

Lawrence: Küf, your situation was a little different in that you were grinding it out—you were looking to be a performing artist, a recording artist, a touring artist. That was your path.

Küf Knotz: Yeah, for sure. Before this project, I was always in bands, like full bands. I had been doing it for years before this. It was that typical starving artist lifestyle, grinding to get gigs, trying to keep a band together while making the minimum amount of money, and having to split the pot so many ways. It was definitely a grind.

Lawrence: Yeah. What kind of bands? What was a typical lineup?

Küf: Drums, bass, keys, guitar, and then I always had a vocalist.

Lawrence: So, was it in the mold of The Roots?

Küf: Yeah, living and growing up in Philly, they were a huge inspiration. At that time, we're talking about the mid-2000s, like 2004 to 2011, Philadelphia, and the soul scene—the live hip-hop was at a high, and I was definitely in that movement. My first band was more like Limp Bizkit, like rock and hip-hop. [laughter] Then, after that, it was pretty much all neo-soul, hip-hop, jazz-influenced bands.

Lawrence: I know many of those new metal and hip-hop fusion bands are coming back or on the nostalgia circuit, but I'm going to go on record as saying the neo-soul stuff has aged much better.

Küf: I would agree with you 100%. [laughter]

Lawrence: It's interesting, though, because, along those lines, the music the two of you make could be from '94, it could be 2004, it could be 2024, and it's not retro or throwback. It kind of floats through time.

Küf: Thank you, that's the aim.

Lawrence: Well, how does one aim for that? Other than setting the intention of wanting to make timeless music, how do you translate that?

Küf: I think a lot of times, it comes together pretty organically. We both pull from things we loved growing up, take those influences, and put our spin on them.

This album [Hypnagogia] is the first Christine and I created from scratch—we created every sound you hear there. It is also the first that feels like our album, getting out exactly what we're hearing in our heads into a sound. What comes out is that mix of all those periods—the early nineties hip-hop, the alternative throughout the 2000s, the eighties—it's like a mix of all that.


Lawrence: Christine, I understand when you first saw Küf play live, it was a "wow" moment. You said he had a skill or talent you were drawn to that you wanted to be part of. What did you see?

Christine: First of all, the lyrics were super motivating and vibrant. At that time, every day, all my car rides were filled with trying to find songs I could play in music therapy sessions. So, I was listening to the lyrics all the time. I had never heard somebody live whose songs I could use for the place that I was working in.

I needed to find music appropriate for the kids and liked by the adults—music that could appeal to any age. So I just was wowed by hearing this live right in front of my face. He also had two keyboardists, one playing keys and bass and one playing lead guitar. They looked at each other while playing. Then, there was a flute player sitting in.

So as a harpist and an improviser in that world, I was just like—the lyrics, and then he has all these different musicians sitting in that were solidly listening to each other. It just was like a dream to me. It is also interesting that at that moment, I never said anything to him that day. I told my best friend, "Wow, if I were ever in a band, I would want to be in something like that." And then I just let it go.

Lawrence: I have other questions about the live performance. I've never really seen anybody dance with a harp, and I got that feeling while you were playing, even though you're seated, there's an element of dance going on, you know?

Christine: Sometimes I watch videos back, and I'm like... [laughter]

Lawrence: Oh, I don't say that to make you self-conscious. You both show a lot of joy in what you're doing. You're smiling while you're singing.

Küf: Yeah, that's part of the show that I love because, you know, honestly, we play many places where it's a sit-down audience: theaters and stuff. So, I don't always get that energy from the crowd. So if I'm in a place where I'm like, man, I need some energy—when you bounce off each other, I see her enjoying herself and moving. And it helps us out.

Lawrence: Yeah, I can imagine that. Could you talk to me a bit about the evolution of your live show?

Küf: It's grown a lot over the years. Our first show was just acoustic, harp, and vocals. We did that for maybe one or two shows, and then we wanted to have movement and perform in a place where it's not just acoustic. So we started adding instrumentals, and for the first few years, Christine had the computer next to her, hitting start when we started and then pausing it in between.

Sometimes, for sound people, it's not a typical setup, a harp and beats. Often the sound people would see the live instrument and think that that's the main sound. So the harp would be loud, and you couldn't feel the beat. It got to a point where we had to take it into our own hands. I got a small mixing board, brought all the sounds in there, and we controlled our sounds on our own. I control how loud her harp is, how loud the beat is, and how loud our vocals are. Put a little reverb here, take a little bass out of my voice. So we have complete control now, and that's been the most comfortable and easiest representation for us.

And I feel like it's helped us put on an actual show to create a vibe, and for each show, we have visuals behind us. So it's all incorporated in presenting a live show, and it's more fluid now, more comfortable, and consistent.

Cutting Time in Half

Lawrence: Christine, what is music therapy as a practice?

Christine: For a short definition, music therapy uses music to meet non-musical goals. So it really can be used in a lot of different spaces. Some of the spaces you might see are autistic support classrooms, emotional support classrooms, all the way to hospice, and also in psych centers like alcohol and addiction rehabs.

So, music therapy is using music as a tool to work on a life goal. That is broad, but it can be crafted in many different spaces. Usually, a music therapist will have a niche.

Lawrence: Did you have a specialty?

Christine: Yes, I worked mainly with children and adults with autism. I worked in different schools, group homes, and a private practice called Music Works outside of Philadelphia. And a little bit in geriatrics. That was my avenue, which is much different from what I'm doing now.

Lawrence: Is the idea that music is a way for people to connect and communicate when they don't necessarily have other tools at their disposal?

Christine: Yeah, like, we notice the same thing happens sometimes through performance, but there's a special magic that happens in a musical experience that I've found over the years. There's this trust, this build that occurs without even saying anything, making it easier to share experiences. It seems to cut time in half. It might take a long time to get to something deeper or hard to share if we were having conversations.

But often, we have this mutual music connection, and something else references it. For example, if a song has a relatable lyric, someone can say, "Well, I feel like this artist who shared this lyric, and this is my story." That kind of happens faster when you have that third thing in the triangle because there's something else to reference. And there's just a deeper trust that happens quicker. It is also a reference point that helps people explain things compared to the music they hear.

Photo by Carolyn Stanish

Lawrence: One of the things that stands out is the way you open shows with sort of the mantra and the centering exercise. Küf, since you're the one speaking the words, what's the importance of that for you?

Küf: We were playing a lot of yoga classes, and sometimes, closing a yoga class, they'll have this thing called savasana. The teacher will say some things to take you out of the class. And that always felt like a calm and grounding space. But, as much as it's for the audience, it's a moment for us to breathe before we jump into the set and set a mood for everyone. It's also great for dialing in on the sound before the show starts. So it's like a mix of many things, but the main thing is grounding in a moment to relax before jumping into the show.

Lawrence: What do you observe in the audience from the stage or the performer's perspective?

Küf: I don't always see it, but there's always a handful of people after the show that say, "Hey, I appreciated that moment in the beginning." It's consistently relayed to me that it was appreciated. So if we're in a bar or somewhere that's pretty chaotic, I'm like, "Oh, do you think maybe we shouldn't do it? Let's just jump in and get it." And Christine's like, "Nah, it doesn't matter." And it always ends up being a good thing, but sometimes, like in a bar, people are loudly talking. They just want to hear the 'boom, boom, bap,' but it grounds us, and it feels good.

Lawrence: It reminds me of what Bob Marley and the Wailers used to do. They would open the show with traditional Rasta drumming and Nyabinghi drumming. I would imagine it came and went to a certain audience segment and had their own experience of it, but I would think the intention was about setting the sacred space, right?

So, what's next?

Küf: We've already created a lot of new music. So once this album comes out, one of our intentions for this year is to release a lot of music. We'll probably just be releasing new music pretty much monthly.

Lawrence: That seems to be what everybody's counseled to do now, right? It's like smaller projects more frequently; that's the way platforms want artists to feed them.

Küf: Yeah, but I'll always be an album dude. I love making an album, the process of it, putting it together, and the presentation. So we do have music that's ready, and we can put it out.

Lawrence: The art that accompanies the single is really beautiful. I mean, talk about creating the sense of a universe around the music and the art.

Küf: That's our friend Pecue from Philadelphia. Amazing Philly artist. He does a lot of underground hip-hop artists, like graffiti style. And he's just tapped into something special, so it's always cool to collaborate with him.

Lawrence: Do you know where you'll be when you're touring? Like, will you be out here in the Pacific Northwest? I'm just outside Seattle and would love to see the show.

Küf: Oh, really? We just spent some time out there. We were on Bainbridge Island for a little while. We did a residency at Bloedel Reserve.

Lawrence: No kidding. What was that like for you?

Christine: Yeah, that was extremely magical. We got to stay there for three weeks. The project hosts creatives, whether it's writers, painters, or musicians, and their mission is to have the creative arts bring nature to people. So, creative arts can be used to bring people closer to nature.

So we got to roam the grounds even after hours and live there for three weeks. There was magic there—all the plants and everything, and all the animals knew that at five o'clock, the park closed. So there was just this weird, mysterious energy of owls that would come out. We heard coyotes at night. And we shot a music video, and a bee just landed right on my hand. I put my hand out, and it just, like...

Küf: It felt like we were Alice in Wonderland. It was a magical, trippy experience.


Check out Küf Knotz & Christine Elise at kufknotz.com and follow them on Facebook. Purchase Hypnagogia by Küf Knotz and Christine Elise on Bandcamp or Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choice.


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