Lucky breaks

September sees the release of “Meltdown” by The Insiders on legendary drum’n’bass producer and DJ Goldie’s Metalheadz label. Ayah supplied the vocals, making it her third single to date in the UK, following on from the underground hit “Let me Know”, available on the Unabomber-mixed Electric Souls 2 compilation, and the vinyl-only release “Dance Child”. Then there’s her DJ-ing, which has harvested legions of fans, her jazz-soul singing talents, which she trades the turntable for a mic and seven-piece band, and a drum’n’bass label she started with two friends, Lucky Devil Music. From where we’re sitting, it seems extremely well-named – Ayah is making enviable progress on several fronts. Not that luck comes into it, of course. 

 

“My life is pretty packed at the moment,” she says, that laughter again bubbling to the surface. She also works, she adds with almost sounds like an apology, three days a week in an office – well, London isn’t getting any cheaper. “It’s definitely harder to make a living here than back home in Amman, but I’m generally surviving. I’m doing what I love, and I can always take the career back with me to Jordan.”

 

On a syrupy evening, Ayah skips into Herbal, consistently the coolest dance venue in London, and plonks herself on a chair as though it was in her parents’ front room; this has become her second home in last year, with a regular DJ-ing slot earning her bucket-loads of fans and credibility. She chats freely about home, about making her way in a city and an industry which have little patience for mediocrity. She talks with the energy of someone still excited about the challenges ahead, but also with the underlying confidence of an artist whose major battles for recognition are already behind her. “Being in the West has always been a journey of self discovery,” she says, talking as much about life as music. “It has allowed me to bridge the gap between where I always saw myself, somewhere to find what my real cultural home is. It has also helped me to find out where I want to go, who I want to be, open up and be myself.”

 

Ayah, whose looks perhaps owe as much to her Bulgarian mother as her Jordanian father, first arrived in England eight years ago to study art history at Warwick University, which despite the grandiose name and academic reputation, is a somewhat brutal concrete adjunct to the already unlovable city of Coventry. Save for The Specials, the most successful band to fuse soul, reggae and politics in the early 1980s, its almost stereotypically grim urban sprawl is certainly no cultural hotbed. Ayah’s influences, though, do encompass Britain’s inner-cities, with rhythms culled from the West Indian communities of London and Birmingham, which blend with jazz and soul flavours, and are then divided equally among her various musical incarnations. 

 

“I don't think my roots are anywhere,” she says, explaining why there’s very little of “home” in her music. “I don't even know where I want to be yet. I’m discovering a lot about who I am, and finding out where I want to be.”

Ayah insists she’s not running away from anything; it’s just that her ethnicity hasn’t dictated her musical experiences. Not that it should; she was taught classical piano from a young age, and even studied ballet for a decade. “I’m not forgetting the Middle East for one second,” she counters. “I'm extremely proud of where I'm from. And intelligent people ask lots of questions about it, about Jordan and the Middle East in general, and they want to know more.

 

“To be honest, I actually make a point of telling people I’m Arabic now. I like to let people know that I come from a different perspective, that I have a different approach. There does tend to be an attitude in London and the States that only Westerners can become a part of their music scene. That people from the outside should somehow stick to their cultures. But I don't believe in any musical boundaries. Young people want to express themselves wherever they are. They're aware of the need to.”

 

DJ Ayah did display her skills to her fellow countrymen and women back in 2005, helping to launch Prana onto Amman’s notoriously fickle nightclub scene. “I hadn't seen so many people I know in one place in so long,” she smiles, before expressing real appreciation for the support she gets from her friends, who all follow her progress with as much admiration as affection. But she’s not ready for a permanent move back home just yet. She has misgivings about Jordanian society that living in London has opened her eyes to, a sharper appreciation for what freedom – good and bad – means in practical terms. Visiting Amman proves a consistently unsettling experience. “Going out now in West Amman is, I think, an exaggeration of what freedom is,” she says. “It's not natural. It's contrived, and I don't feel convinced by it. I don’t agree with loss of freedom of speech or oppression of any kind, and there is a feeling that the clubs and bars are a mask for what they don’t have. It shocks me when I go back.”

 

Ayah, though, has plenty to keep her occupied in the meantime. Her triple assault on the British music business will continue when she launches two new labels, going by the anagrams of Malak, for soul tunes, and Kalam, for rap and hip-hop. “I work hard at what I do,” she says, after the last still is in the camera. Looking at the polaroids when she leaves, everything seems to be paying off just fine.

 

For the full version of the article, see NOX02