AYANNA WITTER-JOHNSON: FINDING NEW ROOTS

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CREATIVE DIRECTION, STYLING & WORDS MAISIE JANE DANIELS - PHOTOGRAPHY SAMI WELLER - LIGHTING TECHNICIAN ROSS ZILLWOOD - MAKEUP ARTIST MATILDE RIBAU - HAIR STYLIST ASHLEIGH HODGES - LOCATION MASH CREATIVE

There’s something beautifully fitting about an album called New Roots arriving at a time of both endings and beginnings. For Ayanna Witter-Johnson, this summer has held both: the loss of her grandfather and the release of a body of work that reaches deep into family, heritage, memory and the many threads that have shaped her. Three years in the making, New Roots feels less like a collection of songs and more like an excavation. A journey through British-Caribbean identity, Windrush history, grief, and the quiet art of finding your way back to yourself.

A singer, cellist, pianist, composer and producer, Ayanna has never been particularly interested in staying in one musical lane. Her cello (AKA Reuben) has become an unmistakable part of her sound, moving between rhythmic anchor and emotional compass, while her music pulls from jazz, soul, reggae, classical and West African influences without feeling confined by any of them.

Much of New Roots was created in solitude: in lockdown, on retreats, in hotel rooms and in quiet pockets between life on the road. That stillness gave Ayanna space to trust her instincts, embrace vulnerability and let the music exist on its own terms. The result is a record that feels deeply personal while reaching far beyond the self.

To accompany our conversation, we spent some time with Ayanna for an exclusive F Word shoot, capturing another side of the woman behind the music. With New Roots now out in the world, we sat down with Ayanna to talk about lineage, loss, Reuben, finding centre, and learning to trust your own voice.

Opening Image Ayanna wears earrings MAISON LUMIERE

Maisie Daniels: Summer is officially over! How has your summer been?

Ayanna Witter-Johnson: It has been one of the best summers of my life. I would say it's been one of the saddest and one of the best. On the sad end, my granddad passed away and we buried him, which was incredibly sad. Then, on the other end, there’s this rebirth of my music again — putting new music into the world, having such a lovely campaign and wonderful shows. So it's felt like lots to look forward to, but also lots to reflect on. It's been quite a balance.

Maisie: I'm so sorry about your granddad. It sounds like it's been a summer of real highs and lows. Singer, cellist, pianist, composer… quite the list! Where did your musical journey begin, and when did you realise you wanted to explore so many different sides of it?

Ayanna: It began with piano lessons when I was three and a half, four, then picking up the cello in Year Eight, and finding my voice with my friends at school. In my late teens, I really understood that I could live as a creative musician. I applied for a foundation course at Trinity College of Music at the time for composition, and they let me into the degree course instead. They were like, “No, we think you should join the composition degree course.”

I think from that door opening, a whole new world became apparent. Contemporary classical music and jazz, making friends with lots of musicians, being in lots of bands, starting my own ensemble, writing songs and performing. So many things exploded from that doorway.

Ayanna wears dress JENNIFER MILLEDER; earrings SAMANTHA SIU

Maisie: And then there’s Reuben! Where did your love affair with the cello begin, and when did you realise it could become such an integral part of your sound?

Ayanna: Reuben is my OG acoustic cello. The school governor at my secondary school gave him to me on loan throughout secondary school, and my grandma bought him for me at the end of my A Levels when I left.

Reuben then sat in a cupboard for a year during the first year of my degree, not doing anything. But in my second year, I needed some money, so I brought him with me to a Caribbean restaurant. I would sing songs at the back and accompany myself with Reuben, and that's how this incarnation of singing and playing cello came together.

Maisie: Your British-Caribbean identity and your family’s Windrush history are really woven into New Roots. How have the stories and wisdom passed down through your family shaped the way that you make music?

Ayanna: I love that question. I guess it's present lyrically in what I sing about, and rhythmically in the types of music that I embody in the songs — the reggae, the jazz, even the West African rhythms. My mum was in a West African Ghanaian dance troupe when I was young, and I was the dancing mascot baby. All of these threads of my African heritage have found their way into the music.

Something like “Pioneers” feels quite explicit in talking about the contributions of Black people to British culture and Western culture through all of this migration and movement of the Windrush generation, and what they brought here — from food to fashion, the colours, the sound systems, reggae and ska, and all of these things that have shaped modern Britain. I enjoy referencing the culture explicitly.

On a personal note, “Now You’re Flying” is one of the more heartfelt songs. It was a tribute to my great uncle from that generation, who died in the early wave of COVID. He was a massive fan of my music and an encourager — someone who was such a champion of me.

Some of that generation can want you to do more traditional jobs and have more traditional careers, so it was quite encouraging that he supported me in finding my voice and being myself. That song is for him, which is now even more poignant because my granddad has also passed away. I feel like there’s a lot of reflective energy around the album.

Ayanna wears dress AMORA; ring XHENXHEN; necklace SAMANTHA SIU

Maisie: “Pioneers” feels like one of the album’s most powerful statements, tackling the appropriation and erasure of Black culture while celebrating its foundations. You’ve said it’s probably your favourite track on the album — what makes this one particularly special to you?

Ayanna: It’s a mix of me being brave and expressing something that I’ve not expressed before in song, and also just loving the bassline on it. I really love it. The song actually started there, with the bassline. I just didn’t yet have a home for it lyrically, and that came afterwards. I feel like it’s one of those mixtures of real feel-good music, but also singing about something meaningful. The combination of the two feels great to me.

Maisie: New Roots arrives three years after your last album. A lot can change creatively in three years — how do you feel you’ve changed as an artist during that time, and has that found its way into this record?

Ayanna: I think I’m giving myself permission to take more risks musically, to be more vulnerable in the topics and in the lyricism. I also produced it myself, so I feel like I was making the decisions about what the actual tracks sound like.

There’s something unconventional in the approach to the production. It’s not necessarily technically how a lot of people might put a song together. I call it a collage approach to building tracks.

Some of the tracks have elements of the demo versions of the songs from when I was writing them because I couldn’t recapture that essence again in the studio. So I was like, “You know what? We’re just going to keep the demo. We’re going to build around it.” I’d get stems in from different people here, there and everywhere, so it was definitely a mix of recording in studios, demos, recording at home, other people sending me bits, and just synthesising it all into my own world.

Maisie: So much of New Roots was created in solitude — during lockdown, on retreats and on the road. What did those quieter moments allow you to hear or explore that perhaps wouldn’t have been possible in the busier parts of life?

Ayanna: I think it allowed me to trust in my own voice. Not necessarily that less is more, but you don’t have to overproduce a track or overcomplicate a lyric. “Blue” is quite a simple lyric, but it resonates because of its simplicity. It allowed me to find a place where I can express myself in a more straightforward way and have that still feel like me.

Ayanna wears dress ANCIELA; earrings MAISON LUMIERE

Maisie: “Blue” is such a beautiful song. Where do you remember being when you wrote it?

Ayanna: I wrote “Blue” when I was house-sitting in Tufnell Park. I thought I could write an album in a week for some reason — “I’m going to write an album in a week!” — so I was kind of on my own again in this space, just letting all my thoughts and feelings out and shifting through them. I’d had lots of experiences on the road, so I was alchemising what was going on in some of these dynamics, and that’s where “Blue” emerged.

Maisie: You talk about finding centre — personally, culturally and cosmically. What does being grounded look like for you in real life?

Ayanna: For me, being grounded is about simple practices. If I’m consciously trying to ground, I’ll just go on a walk, touch a tree, sit down on the ground, journal. I think it’s a practice of tuning in with myself. Breathing, taking a deep breath, trying not to over-process everything all at once. It’s like coming back to the basics of who I am: I am alive, I have health, the world is okay to some degree. There’s an essence of simplicity — breathing and reconnecting, allowing all the extraneous thoughts to quieten down.

Maisie: Has that taken practice to get to?

Ayanna: I’m always having one of those sorts of weeks! I’m always figuring out what I need to do to bring everything down. Every maybe season, or two or three times a year, I go away by myself for about three days for a spa break, just to sleep and rest and walk and not do too much talking.

Maisie: The three tracks we’ve heard so far feel quite different sonically, which feels very fitting for an artist who refuses to sit in a box. Do you think about genre when you’re creating, or do you just follow wherever the music takes you?

Ayanna: I generally follow what the emotion, the lyric, or the initial spark of the inspiration takes me. I’ll let the music or the story guide me into what it is musically. I think this album, though, when you hear it as a whole, is probably more cohesive than my debut album, interestingly enough. These tracks are quite different, but as a whole, I think everything sits together in a similar world.

Maisie: Can you describe the album as a taste, a colour and a temperature.

Ayanna: Temperature first. I would say it’s definitely on the warmer end. It feels like a sauna that’s just warming up.

For colour, I’d say bronze and ochre, with a hint of indigo. And taste… I keep wanting to say mango with a hint of passion fruit. Mango with passion fruit and a side serving of pomegranates.

Maisie: I love that. And how are you feeling about the album finally going out into the world?

Ayanna: It’s kind of scary, but it also just feels like time now. Now that we’ve been living with the singles, it feels like, yeah, I’m ready to just have it live in the world for people to enjoy.

Maisie: You’ve performed in some incredible spaces. Will you be taking New Roots live, and what can people expect from the show?

Ayanna: There’s a bespoke show for the album that we’ve been developing since May, and it’s a lot more experiential. There are transitions between songs, poetry, and quite a large focus on the lighting and the colour — the journey of colour through the show. There’s a lot of colour-drenching on stage and spotlighting.

Maisie: Some mango ice cream with pomegranates?!

Ayanna: [Laughs]. It’s definitely a more visually sensory experience, with different types of sonic transitions. It’s somewhat theatrical, I would say, and there’s a calmness, a meditativeness about the experience.

Maisie: That sounds amazing. Is there something about performing live that you get that you can’t quite capture in the studio?

Ayanna: Completely. Playing live is my favourite part of the entire process of everything in terms of music-making. I think performing is where I’m definitely in my zone.

Maisie: And finally… what’s your favourite F Word?

Ayanna: These are the ones that keep popping into my head. I mean, I do need to choose one because they’re all in my head right now: freedom, fire and falafel. I think I’m going to go with freedom.