Music Feature: JOJO ABOT
“Be open to facing the dark aspects of self. Immerse yourself deeply in your fears and hesitations. Get to know them at the root. Face your discomfort and cuddle it in deep embrace. Bond and overcome. Make it all familiar so you no longer fear the unknown but instead you fight, daily and with vigor for the things in which you believe.”
Originally discovering her through her powerful debut EP FYFYA WOTO, we have since come to love the master creator JOJO ABOT for so much more than just her music.
The Ghanaian-born Los Angeles-based creator JOJO ABOT is a woman of many talents. Engaging with everything from music, visual art, film, photography, poetry, fashion and performance art, JOJO ABOT’s body of work gets to the root of the African spirit and highlights the need to connect with the divine forces operating within us all. Her unique Afrohynosonic sound serves both as a tribute to her native Ghana as well as a link to the divine, with punchy basslines and catchy percussion serving as the vessel to deliver her potent and socially charged lyrics. Her music explores everything from a woman’s right to choose, to the impact of the white man on African peoples, to healing the collective consciousness - which caught the attention of many around the globe including musical legends Ms. Lauryn Hill, Common, and Ebo Taylor.
Her latest releases are a testament to her continued creative evolution, with Fyfya Woto Evelia propagating her profound spiritual mission and Meditations of Resistance and Existence marking her expansion into the world of sound meditations like you’ve never heard before. But all this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Q: What projects have been keeping you busy lately?
JOJO ABOT: I have some textile pieces in an exhibit called SeenUNseen curated by Alison Saar at the LA Louver until January 8th, which is based on the concept of Spirit Portraiture. I’ve been hosting my Afropsychadelia series each month in L.A., where art meets sound meditation and celebration. And I have a large scale oil painting (Ta Kpe Kpe) included in an auction project for Burning Man hosted by Sotheby’s.
Q: Do you feel it's somewhat expected for artists, and especially artists of color, to bend their boundaries and values to get opportunities?
JOJO ABOT: YI don't think that I'm expected as black woman to have boundaries in the space of opportunities presented by white people. There’s this assumption that we’re designed to be consumed and valued by white people, to offer gratitude, and remain humble towards all opportunities because we have nothing else. This is the rhetoric that I grew up with and these are the ideologies that form the premise for a lot of institutional engagement. When you start to establish your boundaries and express your values as an artist of color, the oddity is how often this is met with shock; shock that you’d dare to honor yourself in a partnership by considering yourself of equal value.
Q: How did you learn how to exert your boundaries and honor your values in a space that is largely curated under the white male gaze?
JOJO ABOT: I’ve come to grow into demystifying whiteness as a performance, whiteness as an energy, whiteness as a currency, whiteness as a language – that’s somehow meant to create a space of insecurity for me. When I was growing up, I learned very quickly that my value could not be established by someone who knew nothing about what it meant to walk in my shoes or inhabit my being, and that I didn't enjoy being valued by anyone other than myself. I found it offensive when others would attempt to confine or define me, considering I never asked them to. This constant sense of entitlement to my being – people touching my hair, touching my skin, all the ignorant questioning - made me very protective of my space and turned my focus to finding ways to honor my own sacredness. From a young age, I remember seeking solitude and avoiding spaces that lacked synergy, harmony, and peace. I wasn’t born into a world of riches, I just knew – even as a child - that I had suffered enough and that I’d carried enough sorrow for multiple lifetimes. I knew I deserved something different – peace, calm and goodness - and I’d have to continually stand up for that.
Q: How do you practice honoring your own sacredness?
JOJO ABOT: It starts with my internal state of being because that creates the first condition for success. Then extending that alchemy to bring my immediate environment into agreement with that decision that I've already made within myself, which is to be at peace, to be well, and to fly. That agreement then extends to my outer environment, and it's communicated verbally or nonverbally in the way that I carry myself and in the way that I expand my energy outward, telling the world this is who I am, and this is how I desire to be treated.
Q: How did you come to pursue so many different artistic mediums?
JOJO ABOT: Art is this idea or myth that's been created. The term “art” came from the West and represents the commodification of our spirits’ language. As a Ghanaian, a lot of our traditional spiritual elements and technologies were stolen and then presented as art. So, I don't identify with the term “art”, I actually find the term quite triggering because of these pre existing paradigms. So, when I create, I'm not asking myself, “what can I create today to make a million dollars?” I ask myself, “what can I create today to bring greater harmony to the universe.” Tying this into the history of my people and considering that what we once created as art was later stolen, I create to enter sacred states of being to access presence and healing. This is my truth, and it takes many forms. We live in a world where everything exists as a commodity - including spirituality - but what you call “art” in all its many forms, can do something that money cannot buy which is transform, illuminate, elevate and nourish in ways that are truly everlasting and unifying.
Q: The concept of “God” and spirituality comes up a lot in your music – “NGIWUNKULUNKULU” (I am God in Zulu), “Gods Among Men”, “Divine Feminine”, “Power to the God Within”, etc. What message are you hoping to convey?
JOJO ABOT: I used to feel a lot of guilt around becoming me, because I felt that allowing myself to shine would attract a lot of hate and that showing a certain level of freedom would make me an outsider. So, I had to accept that by shifting more into myself, it would require me to shift outside of the self I already knew, and I had to step into this constant evolutionary space. That’s where I learned that the divine is creation, and creation is spirit in harmony. For me it boils down to understanding that I’m part of this big beautiful infinite design and by showing up as an “artist” in this world, I show up in service, as a facilitator of this greater harmony. It’s something all of us can access when we’re truly living – not partying, not looking flashy on Instagram – but when we're really present in our bodies and spirits, smiling from the depths of our souls, connecting with community and being open to life surprising us. Releasing fear and the need for control, offering trust to the greater knowing that love is god and god is love in infinite undefinable and uncontainable motion creates harmony and beauty in the universe - and that's what CAN anchor us all, regardless of our spiritual practices. So, when people experience what I create, I’m not trying to tell people what to think or how to feel. “Power to the God Within” refers to the power of the Gods of love, peace, grace, forgiveness, empathy, compassion, wisdom, faith, trust - all the gods that you desire to amplify within yourself - the Gods of your own understanding. So, when you listen to my music, or come to my exhibitions, or read my poetry, I'm inviting you to be present enough to listen to yourself and take a deeper pathway into you as a sacred access point to source herself.
Q: Considering that the art world is still heavily curated from the male perspective, what words of wisdom can you give to other female creators?
JOJO ABOT: Don't make decisions from your vagina. I don't exist in this world asking myself, “where can my vagina go? Where can’t my vagina go? What are the limitations of my vagina?” Limitations imposed on us only exist to the degree that we allow ourselves to be defined by others. Generally, when someone says that they’re a feminist, people see that as someone fighting for equality and women’s rights. The way I see it is this: respect me. I shouldn’t have to tell you to respect me. Respect shouldn’t be influenced by whether I have a vagina or not, because I don't make decisions from my vagina. I'm a fully thriving human being. I create, I'm powerful, and I'm infinite because of my design internally and externally. I’ve made a choice not to operate under the perspectives and limitations society has placed on me based on my anatomy. Defining for ourselves what womanhood means is our own journey to have. Now we live in a world where people regardless of their physical anatomy can identify as women, but women who identify as women right out of the womb, are still trying to figure out what womanhood means. And that journey cannot be neglected simply because all these other categories have been created. So, my biggest concern in this space of feminism is that which goes beyond the physical in terms of what it means to be a woman in spirit. Because being a woman transcends anatomy; it’s a portal into something divine. When the feminine meets the masculine in the physical world, it creates life, as is also the case within the metaphysical world within me, within you, within all of us. We should all be free to occupy the masculine and feminine spaces that exist within each of us, without limitation, while always seeking and practicing balance.
Q: What does feminism mean to you?
JOJO ABOT: Harmony. That's what the Divine Feminine has always been about: harmony, synergy, creation, and flow – which we can all access. It's not one side against the other either, men can be feminists too – after all they’re born out of the feminine, they just got lost somewhere along the way. Masculine and feminine energy exists within all of us, we just have to find harmony and synergy among these seemingly opposing forces within ourselves, which is what I would call equality. When we're connected to ourselves and to our inner spiritual truths, this comes about naturally. I feel like the energy that we put towards fighting for some of these illusions of power could be refocused on just being. What happens when we refocus our energy on what we actually want instead of what we don’t want? So much power comes from that. We begin to step into our power, conjuring with intention. We could go through logistics - how can we build institutions that really value women? How can we build spaces that have female leading voices? How can we invest in female visionaries? Etc…because it’s possible, but where are we leading from? The masculine force has been fighting to dominate the feminine force for a long time in both the physical and the metaphysical universes, and that battle has not ended, even as we're seeing people transition. There’s of course a growing desire for the Divine Feminine force of creation to lead the way in governance and our day to day lives, but this requires a deep shift in core beliefs that we all have to feel and tap into. So, to me feminism is not so much about equality as it is about how I remain autonomous in my experience of womanhood – physically and metaphysically – and understanding the power of what I'm sitting on (my vagina) yet being free to operate beyond it. I think the more important questions are, what is it that we actually want? Is it to live freely occupying our beings and purpose? Is it to build spaces where we thrive? Is it to be spiritually sound? Is it to honor earth and all of creation? To build and not destroy? To heal and reconcile? To unite and no longer separate? Because that space of “womanhood” or being a woman or being a feminist is evolving right before our eyes, and in five years, this conversation will change again. So, let us dare to dig deeper with flow and wisdom. Let us dare to consciously evolve.
Click here for an exclusive playlist curated by joJo abot for @feminist
Steph Rushton is a freelance Writer, Music Supervisor and privately practicing Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) currently based in Paris, France. Through her music supervision work at Seven Seas Music, Steph specializes in sourcing authentic international music for her clients and volunteers with global organizations to educate musicians on music rights and the basics of synchronization licenses. Connect with her on Instagram @thedangerousaccountant
