 When you're an academic failure like I am you just think that success is not going to be in your future It turns out if you if you have something to say then there's going to be people that want it When my father abandoned us he left very little behind a Few photos a copy of his doctoral thesis on the Biafran war and the name he had given me Aha may filet j. Oluo Actually, he just he only chose the aha may filet part My mom a white lady from Kansas Wanted me to have a simple American name, so I'd fit in so they compromised and That's why my name is aha may filet joe oluo The the biggest achievement in my artistic career is a show called now I'm fine The core of that show is a six month period of time in my life Where everything that could fall apart fell apart I got divorced my father died and then you know I had this really bizarre disease where your skin does anything that I thought about my life anything that I thought about my future Was put in a question. I can't remember a time that I wasn't like trying to figure out how to make music My father moved back to Nigeria when I was one month old and then just never came back So my mom was left with two children in a very poor environment We didn't really have any instruments around the house Some guy at our apartments was selling a trumpet My mom had just gotten your income tax return and you know she pulled the trigger and I got a trumpet and I stuck with it We met when we were 23 I think like he was doing storytelling Storytelling stand up and music at the same time and in music it wasn't just like jazz and sometimes it would get frustrated I'm like, why can't you focus on one thing I? Found my strength in that I looked and I had all these things all these musical ideas all these joke ideas all these story ideas I realized I think these I think these are part of the same thing when we met He had been married It's Milva divorce had two kids had to drop out of school to support his family This guy didn't get to meet his father He almost died I Mean that's a lot of stuff some people don't recover from one of those things The need is not only surviving he's thriving. That's incredible Yeah, I'm just I'm amazed by him We had the first performance, you know about ten years ago The sound wasn't right and the music was just way harder than I thought it was and it was just it was awful Things fell apart several times I mean like we couldn't even keep the wheels on it and I spent you know all those months writing that music and then You know we had this debut and I was like, okay. I failed like I failed This thing maybe I'm not really in a ranger. Maybe I maybe I can't do this I Put that music to bed after that first show Someone in the band was like I I think you should give that music another chance and I mean to this day I think about if I had not done that, you know the greatest decision I have made artistically was to just keep pushing with that We're at the public theater in New York City one of the greatest theaters in the country And this is where I brought my show Now I'm fine for the under the radar festival and it was my first show in New York I I was so nervous that the things that had worked in Seattle weren't gonna work the same way When that show got a really a rave of you from the New York Times, I was like this is gonna be okay To take a lifetime of negativity and to turn it into something that is not only meant so much to me But it has meant so much to to other people. I mean arts powerful Right now. I'm in a position where I can make something new. I'm gonna jump on that But I have this show that kind of gave me my dad back and in like a weird way You know it turned who he was in my life and to some sort of positive His presence all of a sudden was doing good If you like what you saw, please click the subscribe button and leave a comment below. Thanks for watching