Ritual Healing | an interview with Ayom

Of course, I could say that Ayom’s debut is a delight; Jabu Morales’ rich, sweet voice floats over songs alive with African rhythms, lilting with melancholic European Gypsy accordion and playful saxophone. It’s all true. But it misses the point. Because Ayom isn’t just music, it’s ritual magic – called to entrance Europe, to open what lead singer Morales calls, “the Africa inside us all.” And the spell couldn’t have been cast at a better time. 

As we think of George Floyd and the awakening of consciousness his death inspired, we might remember that it wasn’t just the British and the Americans who tore African lives from their homelands. Europe’s biggest slavers by far were Portuguese. Africans from myriad nations were thrown onto the shores of Brazil – to be worked like cattle in the forests and on sugar plantations. While their enslavers looked to Europe with fado longing, Brazil became as African as samba. Rhythm remains its heartbeat, African ritual its lifeblood: capoeira and Carnaval grew from religions devoted to orixás – sacred vital energies whose presence sanctifies space and time.

Which brings us back to ritual magic. Ayom you see, is the orixá of the tambor. She, not the band who bear her name, is pictured on the CD cover – sitting between an African drum and a European accordion – symbolic of the music that she energises. The orixás, says Brazilian lead singer Morales, are more universal than we realise. Ayom’s mission is to awaken them in Europe.

“When we invoke an orixá,” she explains, “we don’t call on something external. They’re closer than we believe – the energy in nature, in a rushing river, in the living present moment. In Afro-Brazilian culture we feel this, spontaneously. Europe is more formalised. Ayom fuses the two: she brings liberty and spontaneity to European ears.” Even sitting alone in autumn lockdown London I feel this. The first track, ‘Exu’, opens with Ayom – spirit of the tambor – skipping in. Morales’ Sade-smoky, sweet voice follows as sad as a psalm, with the shimmering beads of a shekere, like waves washing on the shore and Alberto Becucci’s accordion, as plaintive as a Sicilian lament. Then the band lifts into an irresistible low, syncopated swing that brings shafts of warmth into my room, like tropical sun penetrating grey clouds.

From there on the album is an enchanting journey of joy tinged with sweet sorrow – through the jagged jig of ‘Baile das Catitas’ and the softly-sung seductiveness of ‘Me Deixe Ser’, with its gorgeous interplay of guitar and sax – to the jauntiness of ‘Valsa Das Estações’.

“Ayom is connection,” says Morales, “between male and female, between spontaneity and formality, between the rhythms of Africa and the melodies of Europe. She brings us from separation to seduction, from conflict to celebration.” And Morales believes we need this right now. While the world watches the US, Bolsonaro’s followers continue to persecute Afro-Brazilians. Candomblé temples are ransacked, Afro-Brazilian culture is deliberately starved of funds, and black Brazilians die in custody in greater numbers than anywhere else in the Americas. 

“If Ayom touches you, then please value her,” says Morales, “She is a voice of unity. But she’s under threat…”  

This article originally appeared in the December 2020 issue of Songlines magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today

Read the review of Ayom's self-titled debut on the Songlines Reviews Database