Poetry and Vocals | b. 1988

aja monet was born Aja Monet Bacquie in New York City to parents of Cuban and Jamaican descent and raised in East New York, Brooklyn, where she began writing poetry at eight. She joined Urban Word NYC as a teenager, performed spoken word at school talent shows, and at nineteen became the youngest winner of the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam in 2007. She describes herself as a surrealist blues poet and works consciously in the tradition of Black Arts Movement poets including Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka and Audre Lorde, who understood poetry and jazz as sharing the same origin and performed accordingly. Her debut album "when the poems do what they do" (drink sum wtr, 2023), featured Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah on trumpet, Samora Pinderhughes on piano, Elena Pinderhughes on flute, Luques Curtis on bass, Weedie Braimah on djembe and Marcus Gilmore on drums. She performed at Newport Jazz Festival in 2024.