Ayoni Discusses Transcendent Musical Explorations of The Self

For 21-year-old singer-songwriter Ayoni, identifying as an artist is so much more than the music itself. It requires personal and public identities, past and future selves, all intertwining to create what she refers to as a “state of aspiration.” Following the release of her new single “The Patriots,” Ayoni, who is currently a student at USC, shared her perspective as a young artist in L.A. and some of the intricacies of her creative process with The Harvard Crimson. In her conscious construction of sound and image as an artist, Ayoni finds a balance between creative freedom and the responsibilities inherent to storytelling.

Though her music carries a variety of influences, from R&B and soul to folk and indie, Ayoni is careful not to define herself within any specific category. “I think I have consciously decided to be genreless, if that makes sense,” she says. “Like I think being, or landing, in a genre for me has never been something I’ve recognized or striven towards. I feel like I have always kind of just created songs and just focused on the story… I know a lot of artists who have done the genre thing, but it gets very restrictive, and the future I see for myself is so limitless and so, just free-flowing.”

Indeed, Ayoni’s songs exist in the space between personal experience and societal context, lending a dual sense of intimacy and universality to the stories she tells. The first track of her EP “Iridescent,” titled “Wife You Up,” was written in direct response to an unsettling misogynistic encounter during a day trip with a friend in L.A, and her lyricism here carries a sense of clear intent: “I’m iridescent, can’t you see,” she says in the bridge, before following it up a few lines later with “We’re iridescent, can’t you see.” “The Patriots,” her newest single, references police brutality through different lenses of identity, moving from “Your knee upon my neck” to “The knees upon our necks.”

On how she navigates the responsibilities of using her voice for the marginalized and underrepresented, Ayoni says, “It’s very rare that we have the chance to center ourselves and give our own narratives. I think for myself, the best way that I can navigate that is to focus on my experience in the current times, as opposed to trying to make a statement for all people that are Black, or all people that are of color, or all people that are women.”

Returning to “Iridescent” as a whole, the EP explores themes of love, femininity, and coming-of-age over the course of eight songs, each one retaining its own distinct sound while building upon a narrative held together by the warm resonance of Ayoni’s voice. Subtle instrumentals and bass ground the melody but are never overpowering, with runs in particular displaying her stunning technical range: Clear-toned high notes transition organically into rich, reverberant low notes, each key and register sharing the same raw authenticity.

Paralleling her music in complexity, craft, and soul are her visual covers, designed in collaboration with creatives Caleb Griffin and Domia Edwards. In discussing their significance, Ayoni says, “I want my image to cut through in the same way that my music does, and so I think a lot of our approach for getting that layered richness to our art is really taking the time to figure out what the intention is… what do we want people to feel?”

She credits Griffin and Edwards’ influences in reorienting her approach. “Up until now, I had been so thoughtful about the future, and, you know, timelessness, but I think there’s also such value in understanding history and understanding the works that have come before you in the art world,” she says. In particular, “The Patriots” takes inspiration from a series of works by photographer Carrie Mae Weems depicting the narratives of Black Americans in the media.

At the end of the interview, Ayoni also shares that she’s currently working on a full-length album. “Iridescent was more of like a chronology, an understanding of what it took to arrive at myself, to move out and become a person, it was a very coming-of-age exploration,” she says. As for what she has planned ahead? “It’s a little bit more about me and the world, about creating a cohesive planet for my sound,” she says. “It’s my first album, so I just hope that people like it.”