Moor Mother

Ayewa was born in Aberdeen, Maryland, where she grew up in a public housing project.^[11][12] She moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to study photography at the Art Institute.^[13]

In 2016, Moor Mother released a studio album, Fetish Bones, on Don Giovanni Records.^[14] The album, which was released alongside a 122-page book of poetry,^[13] was included on year-end lists by Pitchfork,^[15] Rolling Stone,^[16] and The Wire.^[17]

In 2017, she released a studio album, The Motionless Present, on The Vinyl Factory.^[18] It featured collaborations with Geng, DJ Haram, Mental Jewelry, and Rasheedah Phillips.^[19] The same year, she released a collaborative EP with Mental Jewelry, titled Crime Waves, on Don Giovanni Records.^[20][21]

She served as one of the guest curators at the 2018 Le Guess Who? music festival.^[22][23] In 2019, she released Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes.^[24]

Ayewa co-leads and provides lyrics and vocals for the "liberation-oriented free-jazz collective" Irreversible Entanglements.^[25] She met the quintet's members through musical and activist endeavors: bassist Luke Stewart shared bills with her band the Mighty Paradocs; saxophonist Keir Neuringer worked with Books Through Bars, whose events Ayewa has emceed; and the trio of Ayewa, Stewart, and Neuringer was followed by the duo of trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and drummer Tcheser Holmes at a 2015 Musicians Against Brutality event following the shooting of Akai Gurley.^[9] The group performed in the inaugural season of the Kennedy Center's "Direct Current" contemporary culture showcase,^[26] and their releases have been included in best-of lists in Magnet,^[27] NPR Music,^[28] The Quietus,^[29] and Stereogum's "20 Best Jazz Albums Of The 2010s".^[30] The band's instrumentalists also performed on Ayewa's debut theatrical work, Circuit City.^[31]

In the fall of 2021, Ayewa began serving as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music.^[32]