A Tribute to a Human Extraordinaire and her Music which Touches Souls: Ayọ

A glimpse into Ayọs world of music, fashion, TV and charity work from 2007 to 2009

Photos: B. Kucharczyk (1) / Pierre-jean Grouille (3) (CC license)

Introducing Ayọ

No new concert dates

UNICEF work | Michael Jackson tributes

Ayo Joy

Documentary
by Slingshots Music
(release 2010)

ELLE
July 2009

Interview (french)

First album

Joyful
2006

Second album

Gravity at last
2008

Third album

Ayo.: “I have chosen the title, but I never say it before it’s ready”

AfroGipsy is Ayọs favourite description of herself according to her interview on the Joyful album DVD.

The family : what counts

Ayọ was born on 14. September 1980 (Chart: Sun in 21°44 Virgo, Moon in 16°17 Scorpio, Chinese Astrology: Metal Monkey, Numerology: Birthpath 5 [5]) as Joy Olasunmibo Ogunmakin in Frechen near Cologne, Germany to a Nigerian father from Ando State and a Romani mother from Romania. She is the youngest of four siblings, having the two older brothers Sascha and Dennis and one sister Eileen (Yinka). Her father is a mechanical engineer who came in the 1970s to Germany to study. He was mainly bringing up the children alone as Ayọs mother was becoming addicted to heroin when Ayọ was about five years old and also spent some time in jail. Ayọ never lost contact with her mother and described her as “a strong woman, despite all her shortcomings”. After her parents divorced she and her siblings spent periods in care and in foster homes where on one occassion her father kidnapped her back. [6] Ayọ is the niece of the late Richard Ogunmakin whom she dedicated her DVD Ayọ Live at the Olympia.

While the name Joy Olasunmibo Ogunmakin is written in her German passport, her father and relatives in Nigeria used to call her Ayọ. Written this way (with a dot under or at least behind the o) it means 'joy' or 'joyful' in Yoruba (and indeed her parents mentioned that she never cried as a baby). The word Ayo without a dot is the name of a board game. Her second name Olasunmibo means "the one who has been born elsewhere but who will return full of prosperity". Ayọ explains: “In Nigeria it is said that the name which was given to you will guide you in every step of your life and you will become in your life what is expressed by your name". [6]

Ayọ's boyfriend is Baba-Tunde (his parents gave him this name. which means in Yoruba "return of the father", because he was born on the same day his grandfather died), the German born reggae artist Patrice (they are not yet married), with whom she has a son, Nile Nesta Abiola, who was born in late 2005 about two months before she recorded her first album Joyful.

Early years : on two continents

Ayọ grew up in Frechen near Cologne. As toddler she was taken by her mother on women's rights marches. When Ayọ went back to visit her family in Nigeria as a very small child her paternal grandmother hid her because she wanted to keep her there in accordance with Nigerian traditions. But her father refused to follow this custom because he was worried about the political situation in Nigeria and took her, after living in Nigerria for more than a year, back to Europe. For that reason Ayọ never went back to Nigeria as a child. [7]

After her parents divorced when she was seven, her father battled for years with the German social services to regain back custody after he was declared unfit to raise his children as single parent. Ayọ recalls her biracial childhood in Germany: "Sometimes I lived in little villages with my Dad because we had to move with him, and there were all these old people looking at (me) like (I was) a monkey," [8]

Teenage years : good and bad times

When Ayọ was about six years old in the mid 1980s and lived with her father and her siblings she took to playing the violin for a short time, before turning to the piano between the ages of 10 and 14. Later she taught herself to play the guitar: “I needed an instrument I could be at one with… It’s more direct, more aggressive, and I mean that in a good way. The first songs she wrote were about her mother as she reveals in an interview in St. Tropez with Jude Rogers from The Guardian: "My very first songs, when I was 15 or 16, were about my mother. They helped me cope. Before then, I'd keep all my feelings inside, the angry feelings that make you sick. You could say music became my medicine." [6]

Her father worked as DJ to earn extra money during his apprenticeship as a mechanic and so she had readily access to many of his records. Listening to Pink Floyd, Fela Kuti, the Soul Children, Donnie Hathaway, Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley, the standards of Motown but also to Afrobeat like Fela, Ju Ju Music of Nigeria and King Sunny Adé shaped her taste in music: "When I think of my childhood, I have memories full with songs.”. She started to secretly record herself singing to tapes of Snoop Dogg, TLC and Genuwine. Her father had the foresight to let her drop out of school when he found one of her tapes. "He wouldn't believe the voice on them belonged to me. So I had to sing. I was too embarrassed, so I made him stand out in the yard while I sang with my friend in the kitchen." Three minutes later, he said: "If you don't want to study, you don't have to. Go for your music." So at the age of 16 her recording career started when her father took her to a studio to produce a demo.

Although she was still so young she know what kind of music she wanted to make and resisted external forces which wanted her to adopt a music style she wasn't comfortable with. "In my late teens, they wanted to make me the black Britney Spears in Cologne. Then Warner wanted me to be their girl reggae artist. But I didn't want that. My dad would say, 'Why don't you do this Britney Spears stuff now and do your own stuff later?' But there was no way. I didn't want my reputation compromised. I was always burning bridges."

With 18 Ayọ lived in Hamburg where a producer wanted her to record a commercial disc. A record contract was ready for her to sign and she was sent to England where a producer wanted her to record Stop That Train from Bob Marley. But Ayọ hated it and refused to become the next 'German Reggae Sensation' despite the fact that her manager has lent her some money in anticipation of her forecoming contract. [8]

London, Paris, New York : searching the world

At 19 Ayọ left Germany for London where a part of her family lived. The reason she decided to leave Hamburg was the breakup with her boyfriend. She was too proud to show how much she was hurt but a few month later wrote the song Down on your knees to express her feelings (although she herself never was on her knees in real life).[2] "It was an important period in my life - the first time I really expressed myself. I needed to leave Germany to find myself." [3] She bought herself as a parting gift a steel string guitar that she gave the name "Billy". "When I went to London, I didn't have friends but I had this guitar. It was like the guitar was talking to me. The chords gave me a sense of what I wanted to say." [8]

She stayed in London only one year, then she moved to Paris. Her best friend, a designer from Hamburg who has fled from Eritrea, asked her to play in her first fashion show in Paris. She agreed and did also the catwalk (she did modelling when she was younger, however she never liked doing it) but when people asked her if she could do more performances she decided to stay there.[2] She played first in bars, than in bigger concert halls, in television shows and got very positive press coverage in the largest french culture magazine. While in Paris she recorded a demo with five tracks which was played by several local radio stations. "That's where I felt at home for the first time. I went to Paris and didn't speak the language, but I felt like this was a place for me. I was not the colored girl anymore." [8] The attention she gained gave her the opportunity to opening for neo-soul kindred spirits including Omar and Cody Chestnutt and lead to a sold-out show at the prestigious Olympia Theater. After a big record label became aware of her she signed a license agreement with a friend who represented her. However, this arangement came to an end after he started to try to influence her song lyrics. She also became pregnant at that time and so the label contract nearly never happened. Ayọ solved the difficult situation by writing directly to the head of the record company who supported her fully. She signed the contract with the label and he became a good friend, even a father figure for the singer. [8]
Later she divided her time between Paris and New York City.

2008/2009

If she is not traveling around the world, Ayọ lives now full time in New York with Patrice and Nile but has also a flat in Paris. If she returns to Germany she comes back to Kerpen-Brüggen a small village near Cologne. There Patrice was born and has a house and Nile goes to the Kindergarten. Their plan is to build their own house in Jamaika. [8]

Sources

1. http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0,,2143866,00.html

2. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17933800&ampsurl=http://www.xpn.org/programs/worldcafe.php&ampf=module-WC

3. http://www.postonove.com/img/data/bios/ayo_biog2007_english.pdf

4. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071127/ap_en_mu/music_ayo

5. http://www.astrotheme.fr/en/portraits/R74ZMHAs2kpy.htm

6. http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0,,2143866,00.html

6. http://xl.repubblica.it/dettaglio/31541

7. http://www.postonove.com/img/data/bios/ayo_biog2007_english.pdf

8. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071127/ap_en_mu/music_ayo

8. http://www.galore.de/ GALORE, Volume 43, Oktober 2008, pp 14-18 'Ich bin nicht von schlechten Eletern'

Welcome to Ayowiki

After enjoying the songs of Ayọ during summer 2007 I wanted to improve her article at Wikipedia where I'm an regular editor. However, researching the internet brought up much more information than would be appropriate for a Wikipedia article. So I decided, as I was anyway looking into wikis (although more of the semantic type), to create this wiki to store all the info in an organized manner. It's still far from finished as other more important stuff (like family and work ;) doesn't leave me with too much time but it progresses, although with a rather slow pace. The main purpose really is to allow people to understand as fully as possible Ayọs songs on her debut album Joyful and this is only possible by knowing some background information about her life and her way to become that wonderful person and artist.

This is a private, non-commercial playground without any official connection to Ayọ or her management. All info was retrieved from the internet (thanks to Google). Sources and credits are given as much as possible.

If there is any problem please contact ayowiki (at) gmail.com.

Gu
Salzburg, London, Cape Town, Berlin

Version 2

The second version of ayowiki.com was introduced in February/March 2009 to reduce the administrative efforts to keep the site up-to-date by using build-in tools more effectively.
While version 1 resembled a traditional wiki where new content was added directly to various pages, version 2 uses tools and modules provided by wikidot.com to assemble content from individual pages according to content relevant tags. Any new information is added as single new page and auto-magically displayed according to its tags and title. Pages consist of four parts:

Page name (e.g. v2:youtube-Eabd34G) Used to ensure unique content
Page title (e.g. 2009.02.13 Paris (video)) Used to sort content according to date. Always starts with date "YYYY.MM.DD", except for temporarily highlighted items which start with "0>NEW YYY.MM.DD"
Page content (content of page, often included from a template)
Page tags (e.g. video concert 2009 paris) Used to categorize content and filter pages according to desired listings

2010

I'll continue to maintain the wiki on a low level. However, in future detailed information will be left to the official web sites. While I enjoyed the 'Ayọ data mining' efforts during the last years (and as an Ayọ addict will continue for my own enjoyment to minimize any withdrawal symptoms), the wiki has come as far as the general interest makes it look sensible to go.

Gu, 30.12.2009
ayowiki (at) gmail.com

Linking to ayowiki from external sites

To link to the main page use "http://ayowiki.com/"
To link to specific listings of pages use the "http://ayowiki.com/v2:list/tags/" page and add comma separated tags as desired (usually with a '+' prefix, written as %2B in the URL)

Examples:

http://ayowiki.com/v2:list/tags/%2Bvideo,%2Bconcert,%2B2009 (links to list of concert videos from 2009)
http://ayowiki.com/v2:list/tags/%2Bdownonmyknees (links to pages related to the song 'Down On My Knees')

Select a month, than click on date
for relevant info / photos / videos
(hover over to preview)

Page tags: admin ignore

*International:*	Tony Goldring tgasst (at) wma.com and Brian Cohen bcohen (at) wma.com
*North America:*	Cara Lewis cpl (at) wma.com
*France:*	Alain Lahana leratdesvilles (at) wanadoo.fr

*Patrice* (SO)	Family	Friends
Homepage Wikipedia MySpace MySpace Studio blog	Dennis (brother) - MySpace	Fashion designer Bisrat Negassi

Ayọ

Ayọ

> Appearance Dates (>2007 Archive - TV-Radio Archive) (Seatwave Tickets)

2008

2009

The family : what counts

Early years : on two continents

Teenage years : good and bad times

London, Paris, New York : searching the world

2008/2009

Vinyl

LP tracks and track contributions

CD

Albums

Singles

Maxi CD

Tracks

Contributions

DOWNLOAD

DVD

VIDEO GAME

Special

FILMS

Manager: Fatou Sow - Slingshots Music

Agency: William Morris Agency

Booking agents

Label: Universal Music Group

Polydor Records

Previous Label: ThinkZik!

Autograph address

UK Label: Wrasse Records

URBAN.DE (German music site by Universal Music)

SONGWRITERS.DE (German music site by Universal Music)

MySpace 'ayosound'

Ayọ @ Wikipedia

International Movie DataBase (IMDB)

Ayọ @ Music Sites

Fan Sites

Facebook Groups

Directory Sites

Version 1 online-treats page

Related Websites

Welcome to Ayowiki

Version 2

2010

Linking to ayowiki from external sites

Other remarkable sites from Wikidot

Fismat

Research Page

Startup Camp Montreal 6

Kandoria