A BIG name on the Continent, Ayo – a West African dialect word for the singer’s name, Joy – mixes styles in her music and in her cultural DNA.
She was born in Germany of a Nigerian father and a Romanian mother, whose heroin addiction caused early unhappiness in Ayo’s life.
All those different threads, personal and general, pull together in music that is soulful, emotional, funky and, lyrically at least, sometimes raw.
Nothing here is light-hearted, but what do you expect if you buy an album called Gravity At Last? Yet the music has a light touch and the instrumentation is interesting throughout, as Ayo calls on guitars, organs, pedal steel, mandolin, violin, cello, brass, drums and horns.
She does so in a tasteful manner, rather than in chuck-the-lot-in style, and the results are stirring.
Ayo has a great voice too, that can soar and caress, and which at times brings to mind Tracy Chapman. Stand-out tracks: I Am Not Afraid, Sometimes and Mother.
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