{"id":1242,"date":"2014-10-03T13:08:31","date_gmt":"2014-10-03T17:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/?p=1242"},"modified":"2014-10-29T20:12:12","modified_gmt":"2014-10-30T00:12:12","slug":"breakfast-meeting-january-17-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/breakfast-meeting-january-17-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Breakfast Meeting, January 17, 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sonia\"<\/a>SONIA ODUWA AIMY<\/p>\n

With an inimitable velvety voice, Nigerian-born via Italy songwriter, singer, actress, writer and cultural activist Sonia Aimy (Aimy) is the quintessential virtuoso of afro-jazz music. Her music juts out unrestrained brilliance evoking the sound of afro-jazz, highlife, and call-and-response traditional African griot styles. Aimy\u2019s style, however, is still effortlessly “afro-jazz & folk”. Fluent in English, Italian, French and several African languages, Aimy also enjoys exploring African languages through her music including Edo, Yoruba, Hausa (Nigerian), Obamba (Gabon) Wolof (Senegal), Lingala (Congo), Kiswahili (East Africa), Somali, etc.<\/p>\n

Touching hearts and souls has always been her passion since she started singing at the age of 11 in her native Benin City in Nigeria where she received early education from her mother in traditional folklore.<\/p>\n

Aimy\u2019s experience in the arts earned her various lead roles as an actress with the National Theatre of Turin, Rome, Alma Theatre (with Paolo Rossi) with which she toured across Europe, as well as RAI Radio Television Italia where she excelled in various drama series. She has performed at numerous concerts throughout Europe, Africa and in North America.<\/p>\n

The multi-talented Aimy has also starred in several Italian films. Aimy\u2019s work in the media includes writing, producing, directing and presenting multicultural programs for radio. Aimy\u2019s music career started when she was in her teens, singing at St. Joseph\u2019s Catholic Church in Benin City, Nigeria.<\/p>\n

She developed interest in folk, traditional music and storytelling. She pursued education in traditional music and dance. When she came to Italy she studied jazz music and interpretation as well as theatre arts. This extra music education as well as practice through performances has allowed Aimy to craft a unique sound that is distinctly her own that is a beautiful amalgam of jazz, folk, and afropop. Aimy commitment to themes of motherhood and fairplay respectively is highly present in her lyrics.<\/p>\n

Aimy is an author and writer with credits including “Il Colore Sulla Pelle”(Harmattan Italia, 2002 Co-authored with Professor Franca Balsamo), \u201cLe culture intrecciate: Letteratura e Migrazione\u201d (Harmattan Italia, 2007), \u201cPoesia vagabonda\u201d (Settimopoesia 2003), “Lingua Madre”(Edizioni SEB 27, 2006).
\nShe was nominated among the best writers in a national contest organised by Centro Studi Pensiero Feminile promoted by the Regione Piemonte, International Book Fair and Turin World Capital of Book fair.<\/p>\n

Her playwright work credits includes \u201cIdia, Sango\u2019, Fat and Beautiful, Rhythm & Voices from Africa, Pepper Soup, Racism, Women on Stage, Ikaladerhan, Co-written Voices of Orisa (workshop version co-written with Prof Omofolabo Ajayi Soyinka), Scarti, Chi e\u2019 Ultima at Alma Teatro, Turin Italy, among others.
\nHer talent and effort has been recognised in the Italian and Nigerian society through awards and nominations like: Best Positive Figure for Youths in Turin and Caserta (2005\/2006); Millennium Models Nominee among fifty Nigerians in the world by Platinum Bank Limited, Nigeria in 2003; Nominated in 2005 by AfroLife magazine among the Top Ten best Nigerians in Italy. Recently, Aimy received an award in recognition of her work and commitment to end human trafficking through Art and Culture by Regione Vale D\u2019Aosta.<\/p>\n

\u2018Miss Aimy is a hardworking artist, who manages her time creatively engaging in numerous artistic initiatives. Her kind and generous spirit is evident in her lyrics and can be felt in her music and stage plays and is obvious in the much of an echo of Spirituality she leaves on the stage in her live performances. Her art is distinctly cultural with a deep sense of her motherland, an echo of Spirituality setting the backdrop and providing her audience the spiritual foundation for every moment of her presentation.<\/p>\n

Aimy moved recently to Canada and while settling, she is currently networking in the artistic and authors scene, and working in the re-branding of her music geared towards accessing the Canadian and North American audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SONIA ODUWA AIMY With an inimitable velvety voice, Nigerian-born via Italy songwriter, singer, actress, writer and cultural activist Sonia Aimy (Aimy) is the quintessential virtuoso of afro-jazz music. Her music juts out unrestrained brilliance evoking the sound of afro-jazz, highlife, and call-and-response traditional African griot styles. Aimy\u2019s style, however, is still effortlessly “afro-jazz & folk”. … Continue reading Breakfast Meeting, January 17, 2015<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breakfast-speakers-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8RivX-k2","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1301,"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions\/1301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}