Fresh off the airplane from Nigeria , we had the pleasure of seeing Ibeyi in concert at the U Street Music Hall in Washington D.C .Coming straight from Nigeria and into the mist of an Ibeyi concert was a surreal feeling for my sister and I.

Seeing Ibeyi live in concert is like  fresh drinking infused water saturated with Cuban lemons and  French rosemary ,  left to soak in a traditional Yoruba drinking vase.

 

Ibeyi is a female singing group made up of two twin sisters, Lisa Kainde and Naomi Diaz. Lisa and Naomi are half French and half Cuban sisters who were recently signed to xlrecordings. The 20 year old duo sings their songs in English and in Yoruba . Yet their English has a light Cuban accent that gives each of their songs texture.  

Now wait, I know you are wondering: What would two Cuban French girls know about Yoruba  music or the native tongue  ? We were wondering the exact same thing until we researched them and then saw them in concert. 

The name Ibeyi is actually the name for twins in the Yoruba. The two twins grew up learning Yoruba chants and songs in Cuba with their mother. Yoruba is the language of West African slaves taken to Cuba. So many natives’s like the Ibeyi twins naturally embrace their west African culture and effortlessly  indulge in the culture.

According to some of our Yoruba friends:

The Yoruba Culture is rich wuth stories  and artifacts that praise the power of Twins. These stories emphasize  how God’s s like Orisha worshiped the concept of twins and  praises the spirituality of the two interconnected souls. The Ibeyi twins use the power of repetition and chants to connect with their ancestral roots and show respect to their Nigerian ancestors.

In a previous interview Ibeyi  stated :

In the Yoruba culture, twins are celebrated, almost mythologised. If a mother has twins, it’s like she has given birth to gods.

For my sister and I , seeing Ibeyi live in concert was a surreal out of body experience. If you did not understand  or speak the Yoruba language at first it is hard to understand what they are singing sometimes. However, their passion placed goosebumps on our bodies because even though as Igbo’s we couldn’t understand the words we felt the meaning of each word they sang.  It was like watching to synchronized swimmers dive in a hallow body of water, swimming deeper and deeper into the bottom of the ocean until they can hold their breathe no more. That night Ibeyi performed their number one song “River” and the crowd began to rise and slowly drift away into their inner concussions as they baptized our souls with their lyrics . We all were honored to be their first performance in D.C .

Ibeyi is truly the future of  conscious music, stay on the look for these two 20 year old sisters. 

For more on Ibeyi  and to stay up to dates on their tour dates, click here.