Ahead of performance as part of the France-Brazil season this year, Euronews Culture met members of AYOM to discuss spirituality, history, and bringing international musical traditions together.
“Colonisation was a terrible thing, but music was able to take something that was very bad and create something good,” Alberto Becucci, a founding member of AYOM, a band with roots in Africa, South America, and Europe tells Euronews Culture ahead of a landmark concert to celebrate Brazilian and French cultural ties.
Last year, France and Brazil renewed a strategic partnership first established by the country’s then-Presidents Lula and Jacques Chirac in 2006. As part of that partnership, they are celebrating their shared love of culture with a France-Brazil season across 2025.
Kicking off the season, AYOM are performing at the Au Fil de Voix Festival in Paris on 31 January. It’s also part of a recognition of the 50th anniversary of independence for Portuguese-speaking African countries.
AYOM are the perfect band to recognise both the historic anniversary and the cross-cultural international event. AYOM’s six “wanderers” originate from Brazil, Italy, Greece, and Angola. They came together in Portugal through a shared love of African diasporic music, rooted in the sonic traditions of Brazil, Angola and Cape Verde.
Calling the band an act of international cooperation undersells the breadth of musical inspirations they’ve incorporated into their sound. They’ve just released a new single, ‘Samba Para O Vazio’, which is sung half in Portuguese and half in French.
In part, this is the result of the lyrics being written for the group by a French friend. “These songs were born in French. We imagine that to use a language that people in France can understand, it could be a nice way to communicate with another country,” Becucci says.
Jabu Morales is the leader of the group. Through his Brazilian heritage, he brings a wealth of knowledge about Brazilian music and Brazilian popular music that is mixed with Angolan music, due largely to the South American country’s colonial historic ties with the African nation.
But it’s not just influence from South America and Africa. From his Greek and Italian roots, Timoteo Grignani brings European sensibilities to the fray. Together, they look for “this magical thing that makes music eternal”, Grignani says.
“There are three percussionists in our band, so groove is very important for us and of course, African music is a master of these kinds of secrets,” Grignani says. “These are the forms of music from all of time that everybody knows and will stay in the mind of humanity forever.”
All of AYOM’s music is about bringing historical traditions of music into new worlds through synthesis. One example Grignani gives is Angolan music’s shared history with Cuban music through its years under Portuguese communist rule. Likewise how Angolan semba music informed Brazilian samba. “The combination is always something new but at the same time it comes from the roots,” he says.
Even their name is rooted in tradition. AYOM is the “Lord of Music” in Candomblè, an African diasporic religion that developed in Brazil bringing together traditions from Yoruba, Gbe, Bantu and Catholicism. Ayom is an orixá, a spiritual entity, who brings music to humanity in the form of “a woman who lives inside drums,” Grignani says.
AYOM’s spiritual approach to music is evident from their 2024 album ‘Sa.Li.Va.’ The album name refers to the band’s three tenets of creativity: “SA-grado” (sacrality), “LI-berdade” (freedom and love), and “VA-lentia” (courage). Over the album’s nine tracks, three sets of three songs each explore the concepts in turn.
“The songs that are in our album that speak about sacrality, yes, they are about orixás, the goddess from Candomblè, but they are also energy. We don’t believe that they are like god, it’s not like the normal religion,” explains Becucci. “But to make music is the most evident proof that there is something bigger, something transcendental.”
AYOM played in more than 15 countries last year, 20 the year before. As you listen to their music, their addictive rhythms and celebratory melodies instantly connect beyond any language barrier. “It’s incredible how the music can speak behind the language,” Becucci says. “People don’t just connect with rational meaning, but with feelings.” Nodding to the album name, while the words we might all speak differ, the thing we all share regardless of language is saliva.