JoVia Armstrong is a well-traveled musician, composer, producer, and educator from Detroit, Michigan. She won the 2014 Best Black Female Percussionist of the Year through the Black Women in Jazz Awards. Shortly after, in 2015, she became an official member of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Armstrong is now on the executive board serving as the organization’s Secretary and chair of its membership committee. She is an endorsed artist with QSC, Sabian, Icon Pro Audio, and Gon Bops. 

Serving as percussionist, background vocalist, and tour manager of JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound kept her very busy from 2013 until 2018. She composed and produced their 2018 E.P., “Red, Black, and Blue,” an edgy soul album that delivered lyrics that echoed messages from Black America to White America. She is the percussionist and a composer for Detroit-based World /Jazz group Musique Noire. Their 2008 debut CD “Good Hair” received three Detroit Music Awards nominations. They won the 2015 Best Black Female Jazz Group through Black Women in Jazz Awards and have a 2017 release entitled “Reflections: We Breathe.” She released her solo album, “Fuzzy Blue Robe Chronicles,” in 2009, heralded as eclectic and timeless. She has composed music for five independent film shorts.

Eunoia Society is Armstrong’s current project as a bandleader. The ensemble experiments with immersive technology while composing music intended to be therapeutic entertainment. This project relies heavily on repetition, drones, reverb, delays, and other time-based processed effects. In their practice, they explore performing in multichannel audio systems, telematic shows, and various techniques using high-end audio. United, these compositional and technological experiences are to be consumed as contemplative elements of music, offering a musical palette of sounds to help cope with the everyday stresses of life. While performing, Eunoia Society is dedicated to facilitating electronic music workshops with young Black girls to gain their interests in technology. 

Music for their July 2022 release, “The Antidote Suite” was composed for The Black Index Art Exhibit, featuring six prominent Black artists whose works “showcase self-representation as an antidote to colonialist images,” as described by the exhibit’s curator, Dr. Bridget Cooks. Recording on the album were special guest musicians Isaiah Sharkey on bass and Jeff Parker on guitar. The album received exceptional reviews in major publications such as The New York Times, Down Beat Magazine, Jazziz, JazzTimes, The Wire and more including Europe. “Comparisons to Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band from the 1970s are purposeful and warranted,” wrote Britt Robson of JazzTimes Magazine. While The New York Times writer Jon Pareles quotes, “…the entire album has the humid magnetism of a weather pattern…” A fun fact about the album is that there were no rehearsals or charts written to prepare for the recording session. Armstrong recorded demos in her bedroom during the pandemic in an attempt to test her own beliefs that there are no such things as mistakes and that perfectionism is not a feat to conquer. She also wanted to break away from Eurocentric methods of writing and producing music. She sent the recordings to the musicians and let them manifest in whatever way the music wanted to exist. Their second release, “Epsilon,” will be released in May 2023. 

She studied percussion, french horn, and cello at the prestigious Cass Tech H.S. On trips to the music store with her family, she discovered artists from other countries. The complex rhythms piqued her interest in learning hand percussion instruments. While her beginnings as a classical percussionist but desired to play for audiences that could respond to the energy of her performance. At Michigan State University, her mentor Francisco Mora-Catlett taught her Afro-Cuban hand percussion and got her hip to the music of the Black diaspora. After transferring to Columbia College Chicago (CCC), where she earned her B.A. in Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management, she worked for the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago—discovering even more about the history of Black music. “I remember lying on the floor at the library at MSU, reading until the security guard would come by to tell me that I was causing a fire hazard.” Her influences stem from Lebanese musician Rabih Abou-Khalil, Malian singer Oumou Sangare, Brazilian Jazz trio Azymuth, AfroCuban band Irakere, Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez and more.

But, there are two artists who have been most influential on JoVia’s style. One artist is Herbie Hancock. His use of acoustic and electric instruments, jazz and hip-hop sensibilities, and chordal language has always caught her ear while the rhythms of Peruvian vocalist Susana Baca challenged her sense of rhythmic time. A couple of years after graduating CCC and learning about the cajon through Baca’s music, JoVia went on tour with a group of South American musicians playing the cajon. While learning how to play the cajon on this tour, she was also learning rhythms from Peru, Chilé, Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador. While on this tour she met and performed with Joe Vasconsellos, an amazing Chilean pop star. As an original member of the Detroit-based all-women group Musique Noire, she began developing her own style of playing the cajon. Using it within a hybrid configuration allows her to play grooves, use electronics and also incorporate other hand percussion instruments.

She has performed with El DeBarge, Omar, Les Nubians, Rahsaan Patterson, Maysa, Eric Roberson, Frank McComb, The Impressions, Isaiah Sharkey, Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble, Malian musicians Ballaké Sissoko & Babani Kone, Joe Vasconcellos, Martha Reeves, and many more. You may also catch her performing in Johnny Gill’s music video, “Soul of a Woman,” featuring Tiffany Haddish. 

She was a Teaching Artist for over 20 years and received the 3Arts Siragusa Foundation Artist Award in 2011 for her work as a Teaching Artist. Like most urban producers, she is a self-taught beatmaker, composer, and producer. She was also a mentor alongside Bro. Mike Hawkins at Digital Youth Network, serving the students at YOUmedia Chicago. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of California-Irvine in the music department’s Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology program in June 2022. She is now an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Virginia’s Department of Music.