French-Ivorian singer-songwriter wordsofAzia is drawing on her Bété heritage from Côte d’Ivoire in her music, including her song Okè, which features her mother’s voice alongside her own. In an interview, she describes how returning to her roots helped her hear the influence of the women who came before her.
Music from the meeting point#
Born in France to a Bété mother, wordsofAzia has grown up between different geographies, languages and cultural experiences. Rather than treating that distance as a break, she uses it as a starting point. Her work draws on Bété chants and ancestral traditions, blending them with folk, soul and jazz.
Starting from the chant#
For Okè, the creative process began with a traditional chant. “It feels like the root of everything, the origin,” she says. “The creative process can begin in different ways, but sometimes it starts with the chants and what they evoke in me. That was what happened with Okè. It began with the chant.”
The song opens with traditional Bété chants from Côte d’Ivoire. “It’s traditional Bété, although I tweaked the harmonies a little and added some words and chords differently,” she says. She also finds the chants soothing, and says she loves listening as much as she loves singing and playing guitar.
A voice passed down#
Okè explores the relationship between mother and child. The song is shaped by what survives migration, the histories women carry in their bodies and the ways cultural memory finds refuge in song. For wordsofAzia, making it also meant discovering her mother anew: as the woman who raised her, a daughter of a culture, and a keeper of traditions she has continued to sing across continents.
She says her mother was singing even before she was born, and that her mother comes from a line of women who sang, including her own mother, her aunts and her grandmother’s sister. “It’s something that’s in my DNA.”
Growing up in the West with an African background, she was not always proud of her voice. Her voice has a low range, although she can sing high. A video of her mother and grandmother singing together changed how she saw it. “I realised that this voice I had been uncomfortable with was something I’d inherited from my mother and grandmother.”
She names music as the greatest of her inheritances, which came to her in a way that felt inevitable. “Music is how I communicate, and I know it existed before me.” She also uses music to express her love for God and her creativity, and to connect with people when she is struggling in other areas of her life.
Between Paris and Abidjan#
She describes growing up feeling out of place. “I grew up feeling like I was never in the right place.” She spent years trying to fit in before realising that her background was part of who she is.
Her move to Abidjan, in Côte d’Ivoire, changed her view of herself. “I began to recognise how many aspects of me actually came from that place.” Her family is unevenly spread across her heritage:
- Mother’s side: about 40 to 50 relatives
- Father’s side: around four or five people
Surrounded by aunts, cousins and her mother, she says she was raised within Ivorian culture even while living in Paris.
She acknowledges that being mixed-race and raised in the West means she still feels different, and that her skin colour can shape how people perceive her. “Sometimes it’s hard to blend in without being noticed or questioned.”
