Biography
Jennifer Yaa Akoto Kieck better known by her stage name Y'akoto
Born 1988, Hamburg
As the daughter of a Ghanaian father and a German mother, Jennifer Yaa Akoto was raised a cosmopolite from her infancy. She was born in Hamburg and grew up in Ghana with sojourns in Cameroun, Togo and Chad before finally ending up shuttling between Hamburg, Lomé and Paris, a wanderer between worlds, a modern-day nomad who has always drawn strength from a state of permanent transition, which she has always seen as the inexhaustible source of her inspiration. “
Music has always defined Y’akoto’s life: her father was a renowned artist of the West African Highlife music genre while Y’akoto herself was given piano lessons at a very early age. At the age of 13, she sang in a band for the first time. With their effervescent fusion of Rock, Reggae, Soul and Funk, they toured the youth clubs and won numerous band competitions. At 16, she made a brief excursion into electronic music in a fit of adolescent whimsy which lasted until she ended up in a line-up involving beat box, guitar, bass and vocals. This was shortly after successfully graduating as a certified teacher of dance when the solo artist Y’akoto emerged full-blown.
Her debut album, ‘Babyblues’ is a splendid collection of songs full of meaning and depth which Y’akoto wrote herself in the course of the past two years in close collaboration with Mocky, Haze and the Kahedi production team (Max Herre, Samon Kawamura and Roberto Di Gioia).
With her songs, Y’akoto follows in the footsteps of such luminaries as Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Erykah Badu as she manages effortlessly to encapsulate grandly intense feeling in exquisite narrative vignettes, moving miniatures in which the concerns of a single individual become the concerns of many. And yet, Y’akoto is simply on a hegira of soul-searching.
Music has always defined Y’akoto’s life: her father was a renowned artist of the West African Highlife music genre while Y’akoto herself was given piano lessons at a very early age. At the age of 13, she sang in a band for the first time. With their effervescent fusion of Rock, Reggae, Soul and Funk, they toured the youth clubs and won numerous band competitions. At 16, she made a brief excursion into electronic music in a fit of adolescent whimsy which lasted until she ended up in a line-up involving beat box, guitar, bass and vocals. This was shortly after successfully graduating as a certified teacher of dance when the solo artist Y’akoto emerged full-blown.
Her debut album, ‘Babyblues’ is a splendid collection of songs full of meaning and depth which Y’akoto wrote herself in the course of the past two years in close collaboration with Mocky, Haze and the Kahedi production team (Max Herre, Samon Kawamura and Roberto Di Gioia).
With her songs, Y’akoto follows in the footsteps of such luminaries as Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Erykah Badu as she manages effortlessly to encapsulate grandly intense feeling in exquisite narrative vignettes, moving miniatures in which the concerns of a single individual become the concerns of many. And yet, Y’akoto is simply on a hegira of soul-searching.
