Aya Nakamura gave a grand performance at the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony when she performed two of her hit songs, “Pookie” and“Djadja” as well as Charles Aznavour's “For Me Formidable."
On stage, Nakamura dazzled the crowd in a gold Dior ensemble that was covered in feathers.
French president Emmanuel Macron told The Guardian why Nakamura was the perfect person to take the stage that night along with other performers such as Céline Dion and Lady Gaga.
He said, "She speaks to a good number of our fellow citizens, and I think she is absolutely in her rightful place in an opening or closing ceremony."
Read on to learn all about Aya Nakamura.
Aya Nakamura's real name is Aya Danioko
According to her IMDb profile, Nakamura's real name is Aya Danioko and she was born on May 10, 1995, in Bamako, Mali, making her a Taurus.
The New York Times reports that she got her stage name from a character in “Heroes,” a science fiction series that aired on NBC between 2006 and 2010. In the show, there was a character called Hiro Nakamura, who had time travel and teleportation skills.
As a little girl, Nakamura was raised in the suburbs of Paris and she is the eldest of five siblings.
In a 2017 interview with Le Monde, she shared that she was the one in her family that took singing seriously.
"Everyone sings in my family. But I’m the only one who dared to sing ‘for real,’” she said.
Aya Nakamura is the most streamed French artist in the world
According to her label, Warner Music Group, Nakamura sold more than one million copies of her 2018 self-titled album, "Nakamura," worldwide and has had her songs streamed more than four billion times on Spotify, making her album the most popular French-language album of all time on the platform.
In her music, Nakamura likes to use a combination of French lyrics mixed with Arabic, English and West African languages like Bambara, the Malian language of her parents, per The New York Times. In doing so, she creates music that is very diverse.
Some of her most popular songs on Spotify are "Copiness" and "Djadja," which are featured on her sophomore album "Nakamura."
Aya Nakamura is a mother
Nakamura is a proud mom. Although she rarely posts pictures of her child(ren) online, Nakamura spoke to Vogue France about what it's like to be a mother.
In the interview, she confirmed she has a daughter and said she used to act just like her when she was a child.
"I never took singing lessons. I was like my daughter, singing in front of videos with a hairbrush as a microphone! Probably because I was imitating the songs I watched on TV. I thought it was great," she said.
Aya Nakamura almost pursued a career in fashion
According to Le Monde, Nakamura began studying fashion at La Courneuve after she graduated from high school.
“I was studying fashion at La Courneuve. I wanted to be a designer, but I stopped enjoying it, so I sang," she told the outlet.
Nakamura also spoke more about it in an interview with Vogue France.
She said, "When I was younger, I studied pattern making and I really wanted to be a pattern maker. It takes so much patience, though, and that’s not my forte. I quit in spite of myself simply because I couldn’t. That was my closest relationship with fashion."
Aya Nakamura fights for women's emancipation
Nakamura understands that she's become an empowering role model for women.
"At the beginning of my career, I was rather skeptical about this idea of a role model. But it is a reality: I have influence," she told CB News. "If I allow, through my work and my commitments, certain women to assert themselves, then it is a source of pride! I believe that influence must be useful. Otherwise it is useless."
When asked about her commitments, she said she's really taken a liking to women's emancipation.
"Women’s emancipation. That’s my fight," she said.
"It’s all violence against women that I fight. If I can use my music and my fame for them, I never hesitate," she added.
