From Paris with Lagos

BUKOLA ELEMIDE knows how the soul of a city can flow through music. The 26-year-old singer/guitarist now known professionally as Asa (pronounced "Asha"), was born in Paris in 1982, and grew up in the pulsing cauldron of Afrobeat that was Lagos, Nigeria. Inspired by JuJu music, the legendary King Sunny Ade, local hip-hop and the iconic Fela Kuti, she soaked up what she calls "gyration music of the streets — the Nigerian equivalent of 'music from the 'hood"'. By her early 20s, she'd been invited to Marseilles, southern France, to sing with a contemporary free jazz band, and played in Portugal as an ambassador for MTV, after the success of her debut single, Fire on the Mountain. Now again based in Paris, the soulful, worldly, considered musician, whose vocal maturity has already drawn comparisons to Lauren Hill and Erykah Badu,... [read full story]