The name, JOGYO translates from sanskrit as "Pure thoughts or stillness among action." The band, JOGYO is about flow, surrendering to the constant change and harnessing it to create a sonic bombast that is hard to compare to any other. Reggae and hardcore elements mingle with tribal and folkloric influences to create an entirely new sound. Marrying components of tribal music with electronic beats results in music that somehow recalls the best work of Public Enemy producers "The Bomb Squad" while simultaneously calling back to the artists roots in the African Diaspora and the New York art world. JOGYO is Dru Barnes and Devi Mambouka.

Raised just outside Trenchtown, Dru Barnes spent much of his youth in the woods with his grandparents learning the old traditions of his home country. After coming to America armed with the lessons learned in the woods, he began to apply them tomusic and art projects in New York.

Growing up as the daughter of the Ambassador of Gabon and a Singaporean mother, Devi Mambouka obtained a unique perspective on Africa as a source of our essential being and as a metaphor for the merging of the disparate cultures of the world from which they had sprung forth.
Joined by their early exposure to extreme views of the world, Barnes and Mambouka chose to not abandon the old world lessons they learned in their youth and instead decided to fuse the old and modern world through the music of JOGYO.

On “Rudeboy,” JOGYO’s debut single (Digital 9/13, 7" vinyl 9/27 via Dither Down Records), Barnes, in an attempt to push things forward, exclaims, “I don’t wanna be a rudeboy no more no more.” Produced by The Last Nights, AKA Jordan Parker, “Rudeboy” is a distorted electro dancehall onslaught.

The b-side is “Thundacat,” a bass-heavy yet quirky dance floor banger also produced by Parker. Barnes and Mambouka wax about the future of music and individuality.