Black as the Cosmos Explores Culture Through Crystal Art, Music, Sex and Magic

Brianna Daniels is an unclassifiable creative. Like the light-refracting crystals she uses to fashion wearable art, there are many facets to her personality and passions.

As B/rianna or Brianna Daniels, she’s a theater technician and actor, a yoga guide, a crystal Reiki practitioner, an artist who crafts crystal “cosmosis stones,” a sex educator and a Black esoteric.

As DJ Black as the Cosmos, she spins what she calls “expansive Black music,” a melange of house, alternative R&B, jazz, Afropop, country music, ambient sounds and more — all made by Black artists.

Under these guises, the Black, queer, unquenchably curious polymath and Charlotte native prefers in person to be called either B or Black as the Cosmos.

She brings her Black diasporic sound experience to the Ultraviolet Sapphic Dance Party at Petra’s on Aug. 9, then the Southern Fried Gospel & Pride Day Party at Sip City on Aug. 17. With both events, Daniels is pleased to take part in Charlotte Pride, which she characterizes as “radical resistance and radical liberation.”

It’s a role she takes on herself during all months of the year.

“Brianna’s work as a sculptor, facilitator and DJ reimagines cultural memory,” says Daniels’ friend, colleague and collaborator Alicia Bell. “They create experiences and pieces of work that are both liberatory and grounded, honoring Black histories while envisioning expansive, joyful futures — and she does all of this while caring really deeply for people, place and community.”

Daniels’ balance of both personal and expansive visions informs her ongoing whirlwind of creativity, which began with dance.

Daniels’ mother taught dance and performed in competitions in Fort Bragg before moving her family to Charlotte, where B was born. Growing up, Daniels remembers dancing and listening to Celia Cruz, James Brown and the Spice Girls.

“There was always a musical aspect to whatever I did,” she notes. An avid concertgoer at an early age, Daniels saw Janet Jackson on her 1998 Velvet Rope Tour. She also remembers seeing Sweet Honey in the Rock, the Grammy-nominated a capella ensemble comprising all Black women — at Queens University.

Daniels’ love of dance and music led to an interest in art, and all these interests entwined with Black esoteric practices and rituals.

“My spiritual practice is part of the ritual of moving to intentional sound,” she says.

Before Daniels delved into her spiritualism, however, she dove into making art. The practice of making art started at home, Daniels recalls, but it was also encouraged by teachers at Oakhurst Elementary School, where Daniels began sculpting, weaving, painting, sketching and working with paper and glue.

“Most of my life, although [making art] was visible, it was definitely internal,” Daniels notes.

She approached making art not as a way to be seen but as something she did in moments of self-reflection. As she moved on to middle school and East Mecklenburg High School, Daniels’ creativity became more public. She got involved in stagework at Charlotte’s now closed Afro-American Children’s Theatre.

B explores different paths

After attending Central Piedmont Community College to study drama, theatre arts and stagecraft, Daniels started working at nonprofit experiential theatre company Carolina Actors Studio Theatre (CAST), then located at 2424 North Davidson St.

There Daniels worked as a stage manager, collaborating with playwright and CAST co-founder Dee Abdullah, who remains a close friend.

“Whenever Dee asked me to act, I would — reluctantly, but definitely for her,” Daniels offers. “I’ve always participated in the Charlotte theatre community as a technician, whether it be stage management, board management, costumes [or] lighting.”

Daniels’ theatre and dance interests led to a stint working at Morris Costumes, the Monroe Road landmark and retail shop that specializes in theatrical costumes and makeup, magic tricks, animatronic figures, tuxedos and dancewear.

“I’ve always been a costume jewelry wearer, from the theatre [and] dance aspects of my life,” Daniels remembers.

“At [Morris] I got to play with different styles of jewelry.”

At that time, Daniels started carrying interesting-looking stones with her, just because she thought they were pretty.

One day, in conversation with a friend at work, Daniels picked up a pretty stone and some copper wire and without paying attention to what she was doing started fashioning a piece of jewelry — a necklace made of a crystal warped in wire.

Soon, Daniels moved on to another job at erotic boutique The Reddoor. She loved the job and stayed there for seven years.

“I was a library card kid,” she explains. “So I was reading all the books I could about the human body, specifically a woman’s body.”

Coupled with access to 1990s and 2000s TV shows focused on sex, Daniels’ library learning led her to the popular adult store, and that in turn inspired Daniels’ burgeoning sex-positive advocacy.

“[The job] was cool because I was a nerd,” she remembers. “I had access to all of these books and I got to test out products to help customers make selections. I loved how people would come in looking for one thing based on a trend [about how] to keep a man or that type of shit.”

B, however, flipped the script, giving customers information about how to please themselves as well as their partner so that both would have a beneficial experience.

While working at The Reddoor, Daniels continued to craft wire-wrapped crystal jewelry. Customers began asking her to make pieces for them. She started putting her unsold pieces on Instagram and directing people to her page.

“That’s really how it started,” Daniels says. As more clients commissioned Daniels for aesthetic pieces, some began asking what the crystals actually signified. Ever the library-loving nerd, B started doing research online, learning the esoteric and metaphysical properties of the stones.

Crystals are believed to possess properties that can influence a person’s energy field and well-being through healing or by enhancing spiritual connections. For instance, amethyst is believed to enhance intuition; citrine is purported to attract wealth and abundance and rose quartz is said to enhance love.

Daniels noticed that people are drawn to certain crystals without realizing that the stones possessed the properties they seek or need. She maintains that crystals function by helping people facilitate hidden memories they harbor about what they need to work on.

“We know more than we think we know,” Daniels says. “[That’s why] different elements resonate with us.”

Meanwhile, Daniels continued to develop as an artist. She got involved in The Roll Up CLT, an artist residency program in Charlotte’s historic Camp Greene neighborhood. The residency, which connects national artists, local talent and residents through collaborations and art creation, was founded by Jessica Gaynelle Moss in 2016.

Moss, an artist, arts administrator, curator, arts consultant and former creative director of the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art + Culture from 2016 to 2017, says she’s known Daniels for over 20 years. The two first met when Moss worked on-and-off at Common Market in Plaza Midwood.

“Brianna’s contributions to The Roll Up have been invaluable,” Moss states. “She has been part of the project from its inception — initially as a volunteer, later as a program coordinator and now as program manager. Early on, she helped prepare the physical space. Over time, she has shaped its atmosphere through intentional curation of music, energy and light.”

In addition to The Roll Up events, Daniels hosted and housed several exhibiting artists who were visiting Charlotte for the opening reception of Moss’ 2018 curatorial project, Black Blooded, at the New Gallery of Modern Art.

Daniels also accompanied Moss on home visits to Black Charlotte art collectors, an important step in preparing Moss’ exhibit The Vault, which displayed art works from the private collections of Black Charlotteans at The Mint Museum in 2023.

“Brianna’s unwavering presence and reliability are qualities that not only distinguish her as a collaborator, but that have profoundly shaped the characteristics of our work together,” Moss offers.

Throughout this time, Daniels continued to research the metaphysical influence of crystals. She realized that her esoteric interests complemented her yoga practice, a revelation that expanded her awareness of how everything is interconnected.

In 2017, Daniels left The Reddoor and pursued crystal adornment and craft full time. Nowadays she mostly does commission work for clients, but her crystal adornments can be seen at Charlotte locations like Reggae Central and Mama Bessie’s Place.

She has also displayed her work at Mood: B L A C K at Goodyear Arts in Camp North End and at The AdornMINT exhibit at Mint Museum Uptown in 2024.

Crafting a piece for a client is an informal, intuitive and collaborative process, Daniels says. Choosing a crystal for a person can be based on their needs — personally or spiritually.

Often Daniels will ask customers what colors they are drawn to. Sometimes those colors resonate with those of the chakras, a yogic concept drawn from the Sanskrit word for the body’s energy centers.

The red root chakra provides grounding and helps release insecurity. The orange sacral chakra promotes joy and creativity. The yellow solar plexus chakra boosts confidence and mental clarity. The green heart chakra opens the heart to love and emotional healing.

The blue throat chakra facilitates clear communication. The indigo third eye chakra enhances intuition, insight, and spiritual awareness. The violet crown chakra connects you to spiritual enlightenment.

Crafting a piece, and choosing the right crystal for a client is inextricably linked with Daniels’ esoteric practice.
“Everything that I do is magic,” she says. “Everything I do is connected to Source, [which is] the practice of gratitude, the practice of presence.”

Daniels believes that a number of her practices, including, art, music, dance and yoga, overlap.

“[They have] different titles, but they’re all the same in a lot of senses,” she notes. “It’s really about connecting to Source and to yourself, and knowing that they’re not separate at all.”

Daniels’ pathway to liberation

On her website, Daniels writes: “Through years of self-investigation and recalibration amid colonial oppression, I have discovered pathways toward the liberated Black being.”

Unpacking that statement, Daniels says the reference to “self-investigation and recalibration” refers to the practice of self-reflection she developed through 500 hours of yoga instructor training.

In reference to colonial oppression, Daniels remembers becoming aware of oppression against people of color through watching movies.

One of those films, the 1995 drama Panther, is a fictionalized account of the The Black Panther Party (BPP), a militant revolutionary organization that advocated for Black liberation and protected Black citizens from police brutality from 1966 to 1982.

Another film Daniels saw at an impressionable age was Rosewood, a 1997 historical drama depicting a 1923 massacre where a white mob attacked and destroyed a Black town in Florida.

Daniels says watching these cinematic history lessons created an awareness about truth and safety, and how both can be elusive.

She also notes the concept of overcoming white nationalist oppression is something that informs her art, music and particularly her metaphysical beliefs.

“I stay connected to my body,” she says. “I pay attention to the planet, my immediate surroundings, the people around me, my loved ones, [and] the people who choose to be in my life and I choose to be there. It’s a care thing; it’s a liberation practice.”

As someone striving to be a liberated Black being, Daniels says she’s a follower of Jesus Christ, but there is one caveat.

“I wouldn’t call myself a Christian by any means, at least not the way it’s operating currently in the world,” she says.

Daniels traces the music she spins and curates as Black as the Cosmos back to her love of dance, specifically to one of the first forms she learned: salsa.

She points out that salsa, often considered to be a Latin dance, is actually Afro-Cuban, drawing on deep roots in African traditions brought to the Americas via the slave trade.

For example, Puerto Rican bomba, which influenced salsa, originated from West African music such as the Martinican vidée.

As a dancer, and as DJ Black as the Cosmos, Daniels welcomes such musical hybrids.

“I currently dance samba and house music,” Daniels declares. “I taught jazz dance and ballet for 13 years. I’m trained in the Silvestre technique, which is an Afro-Brazilian dance technique. I love Black electronic music [and] techno.”

Daniels maintains she loves listening to all of the Black sounds that are available to her and sharing them with people who may have a narrow perspective of what comprises Black music.

That said, she’s shooting for broad appeal when she deejays.

“I am coming from a Black, queer woman’s vantage point, [but] I’m interested in the liberation of all people,” Daniels says. “I like to play music with my friends.”

Like other artists who play dance music, she thrives on the energy exchange between a moving sea of dancers. In fact, at any given moment in her set, Daniels says she there are multiple energy exchanges happening between sound booth and dance floor.

“As a person who feels connected to Source, I feel like I’m channeling messages — messages of love,” Daniels attests. “I know that I’m doing the right thing in my conductor’s position when people come back to me and say, ‘My heart felt full and I haven’t danced like this in years.’”

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Daniels hopes people who encounter her art and music come away with the realization that we’re all better together.

“We’re infinite,” she says. “We’re the ultimate authority of our bodies, minds and spirits. We connect like that.”

Daniels cites the moment when people react to a track she’s playing and she can see an emotion move through their bodies.

“Brianna proves that Black identity is not a limitation but a vast and generative cosmos of creativity, history and future-making,” Bell says. “Her practice shows that healing and rebellion can co-exist in delightfully aesthetic ways.”

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Daniels cherishes those fleeting seconds when she looks out on the dance floor and sees people with eyes closed and faces uplifted. She knows then that the dancers are transported. They’re not wondering if anyone is watching. They don’t feel like they’re being monitored or surveilled.

It’s at moments like this when dancers and DJ share the same wavelength, when artists like B/Brianna/Black as the Cosmos entwine their art, music, dance and mysticism, that all the aspects of humanity come together like the facets of a gem — a beautiful crystal that inspires, heals and instructs.