Jon Gold has spent decades embedded in Brazilian jazz, studying under a fellowship at PUC-Rio and working alongside names like A.C. Jobim and Hermeto Pascoal, and “ASHIA” pulls from that deep well while pushing into new territory. The song takes its title from a Cameroonian word with a thousand possible meanings, centered on gratitude, inspired by a friendship Gold formed with someone from Cameroon and their family. It’s framed as a tribute to the Cameroonian people amid their ongoing struggle for peace, and that intention gives the track’s obvious joy a more grounded purpose underneath it.
This is the most Brazilian Afrobeat song I’ve ever listened to, and the short version is that it’s amazingly fun. There’s a real jazz fusion current running through it too, especially in how syncopated the piano parts are; everything here is rhythmically complex, layered with samba, Cabo Verdean calypso, and Afrobeat rhythm structures all working at once, but that complexity never gets in the way of the fun. That’s the real trick of the song; it stays completely accessible even while doing something genuinely intricate underneath the surface. The horns add a melodic jazz sensibility on top of all that rhythm, bright and brilliant, and the way every element locks together feels like something that could only come from real musicians actually listening and responding to each other in the room.
That’s not incidental either. The track was recorded across three continents, with contributions from Grammy-nominated drummer Mauricio Zottarelli and bassist Jackson Lourenço from Brazil, vocalist Juan Lucangioli from Buenos Aires, horn player Will Allen from the US, and a tenor solo from Nigeria’s Ofat, and Gold is explicit that no AI was involved anywhere in the process. Given how much interplay and human feel is audible in the finished track, that claim tracks completely. “ASHIA” is a genuinely joyful, virtuosic single, and a strong preview of the global collaboration Gold has planned for his full album in early 2027.