Ayola on leaving it all behind: Touring Canada on faith, music and instinct

There are artists who drift into music gradually, and then there are those who make a clean break and bet everything on the leap. Ayola, the Nigerian-Canadian Afrosoul singer-songwriter, belongs firmly in the second camp. Born in Ilorin, Nigeria's Kwara State, shaped by years of postgraduate study in biochemistry, pharmaceutics, and medical biotechnology, and now based in Canada, he spent the better part of a decade building a career in pharmaceutical science while quietly nurturing a musical life on the side. In the summer of 2024, standing at a Burna Boy concert in London, he felt something crystallize. By October of that same year, he had released his third album, The Life I Want, a project that proved to be more than a creative statement. It was the moment he made up his mind. Shortly afterward, he left his pharmaceutical career behind and gave himself fully to music. He has been on the road ever since.

Six months into an independent cross-Canada tour, Ayola arrives in Toronto from May 15 to 19, bringing a set of performances and a story worth knowing. By October of that same year, he had released his third album, The Life I Want, a project that proved to be more than a creative statement. It was the moment he made up his mind. Shortly afterward, he left his pharmaceutical career behind and gave himself fully to music. He has been on the road ever since.

The Burna Boy concert in London was the trigger, but Ayola is careful to say it was not really about Burna Boy himself. "It was just the feeling of doing what you truly want to do, and doing it so well that it feels like you're living your God-given purpose on earth," he explains. At the same time, his relationship with his pharmaceutical career was unravelling. He found himself falling behind at work, not from lack of ability but from a growing resentment he could no longer suppress. The deeper problem, as he saw it, was that fear of financial instability had been standing in the way of his art for years.

The release of The Life I Want brought things to a head. With only two weeks off work to shoot content and plan the rollout, he realised the arrangement could not hold. Music and a full-time science career had become incompatible. He chose music.

What makes the story even more telling is how privately he carried the decision. His family found out mostly through his own public storytelling, TikTok posts and the unfolding narrative of the tour itself. His father still does not know. His mother found out through a video post weeks after the fact. "I kept it to myself for a long time," he says, without apology.

Ayola describes his genre as Afrosoul: storytelling music with Afropop rhythm and folk sensibility. His listeners often tell him the music feels nostalgic, melancholic, something that makes time pass differently. He takes that as a compliment.

What sets his sound apart is a duality that runs through his whole biography. Growing up in Ilorin gave him the rhythmic foundation of Afrobeats. Canada shaped him emotionally. The result is music that sits at the intersection of those two experiences, Afropop pulse with folk storytelling at its heart, and a quality that allows listeners from very different backgrounds to find themselves in it.

"Ilorin made me, Canada shaped me, and both worlds reflect my art," he says plainly.

He no longer feels the tension between those two identities that once made him uncomfortable. If anything, he now sees the Nigerian-Canadian duality as one of his strongest assets. Artists like Burna Boy and Tems have demonstrated what is possible when that bridge is crossed with full commitment. Ayola believes he is doing something similar, but from a position that is genuinely his own rather than a constructed brand strategy.

The pharmaceutical side of him has not disappeared entirely. Running his own independent music career means thinking constantly about strategy, positioning, tour routing, outreach and audience development. His science background gives him a certain structural discipline that most artists have to learn the hard way.

But that same background created a trap he has had to work to escape. "One of the biggest things I've had to learn is separating the role of the creator from the role of the editor," he says. The creator needs freedom. The editor comes in later, with judgement. For a long time, he was trying to do both at once, and it choked his art. That distinction has been one of the defining lessons of this season.

Toronto carries weight for Ayola. As the cultural and entertainment capital of Canada, it represents both the largest concentration of West African and Afrobeats community in the country and a proving ground for any artist serious about breaking through. During his May 15 to 19 stay, he plans to do a significant amount of busking across the city, perform at intimate sessions and connect with Toronto's creative community with the same intention he has brought to every other stop on the tour. He is particularly hoping to find artists in the soulful and alternative Afrobeats space, naming Toronto-based Afropop artist Aiza and Brampton-based soul singer ZENESOUL as artists whose worlds feel adjacent to his own.

Gallery spaces, creative hubs and stripped-back performances are all part of what he is looking for. Discovering a city through its creative community rather than its tourist circuit is, by now, a philosophy he has refined across the entire tour.