A Yorùbá chant to Ajé, the spirit of wealth and commerce, opens OKAN‘s new single “Ajé (Owó Nlá Nlá)” before a house beat takes hold. The Cuban duo made it with Miami producer FrankPal, who handed them the track’s starting idea, and they layer chanted Yorùbá vocals and percussion over his production.
Elizabeth Rodriguez and Magdelys Savigne started OKAN, their Afro-Cuban project, in Toronto in 2017 and now run it from South Florida. Rodriguez trained as a classical violinist in Havana and held the concertmaster’s chair in the city’s youth orchestra; Savigne grew up in Santiago de Cuba and took honours in orchestral percussion at the University of the Arts. They are married, both Grammy and Latin-Grammy nominees, and two-time Juno winners whose 2023 album Okantomi took the global music award.
The pair take their name from the Santería word for heart, and their songs have mostly tracked immigration, resistance and queer love. “Ajé (Owó Nlá Nlá)” turns toward abundance: not money alone, but family, health, creativity and spiritual fulfilment, framed through a feminine lens. The refrain “Àjẹ́ wá mí wá o” asks for that abundance to reach the singer and the house she lives in.
The single arrived on 19 June, Juneteenth, the date in 1865 when news of emancipation finally reached enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, more than two years after it had been declared. Putting it out that week, the duo tie the song’s prosperity to freedom and African heritage, and step further into the Yorùbá tradition their music keeps reaching for.
Stream “Ajé (Owó Nlá Nlá)” HERE.