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Singer Ayo held her first showcase in Seoul this week. |
By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
At first glance, Ayo, which means ``joy’’ in Yoruba, is an attractive woman of mixed-race, with delicate facial features and a slender body, the type one might associate with a fashion model.
But judging from her radiant, joyful music, she is an outstanding musician offering her own unique music styles ranging from Afro-beats to folk to reggae.
Debuting last year with her first album, ``Joyful,’’ the 27-year-old rising star held her first Seoul showcase at the KT Art Hall in central Seoul Wednesday. She arrived on Sunday and will leave today after a four-day promotional tour.
To fully understand her music, one has to take cognizance of her somewhat tumultuous life, marked by much suffering and trauma during her childhood years.
When she was a child, her mother turned to drugs and she lived with her father. But she sees these harsh experiences as shaping her life and enabling her to play her music, providing her with the philosophy that music is the power that enables her to overcome all her troubles.
``Actually, when I was a child, I didn’t really talk a lot about my family background. I was really embarrassed about my family,’’ she said in an interview with The Korea Times.
Ayo said that she just sang about something else which was not really important, not about her problems.
``But when I started writing about my life, suddenly music became like a therapy to me… I was able to tell people that my mother was addicted to drugs,’’ she said.
``Music helps me to get to know myself better and to see really important things in life and really understand life. I believe that my family background was a big part of me today. Maybe all the troubles helped me to become a person I am today. So actually it’s the reason why I am playing music,’’ she said.
Ayo was born to a Nigerian father who had come to Germany to study and a Romanian mother who grew up in a gypsy community.
She was born and raised in Germany, but moved around the country, also living in Britain and France.
She had a cycle of living one year in London and three in Paris. Three months ago, she moved back to Germany.
Based on her rich cultural background, she said that her music is a mixture of various genres.
``I believe my music is just the way I am. My music is a kind of a melting pot. It’s a mix of so many different things. I like to keep my freedom not to become just a reggae artist or a soul artist because I believe there is so much to be free to be able to use many different tools not only to be one kind of a box,’’ she said.
Asked about the concept defining her music as ``neo-soul,’’ she refused to accept it.
``Soul is always an old kind…Soul means a kind of maturity. New soul…I don’t like that expression because people don’t say old soul for music. Soul is soul. That’s why I wouldn’t consider it as a new soul,’’ she said.
As a gifted songwriter, she wrote all the songs except one in her album. During the showcase, she played about six or seven songs of her records based on acoustic playing.
Her promotional tour to Seoul is her first in Asia. She said that she was amazed at the Korean way of life.
``People are very traditional. They are not like in Germany or in America...Maybe in France. But in France, they have a little bit more cultures than in Germany. But at the end, they are all Americanized. So you can find a lot of American products. But here, there are a lot of Korean products. It’s beautiful because you have your own,’’ she said.
She has a 17-month-old son in Germany. Ayo grew up under the influence of Pink Floyd, Fela Kuti and Bob Marley.
She said that music is like a world language that connects people. ``When you come to a new country, people react in the same way in France and Germany…We all love simplicity,’’ she said.
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