Zygo Zayano's Artistic Progression Over The Years

Boss In The Wild x Zygo Zayano

I initially started making beats and writing in 2014 in Toronto when I was enrolled in a 9 — week intensive Ruby on Rails bootcamp. Coding during the day and making music at night, and really whenever I got free time. I actually started writing back in 2012, but they were all trash and I was in University then, too many other things on my mind to write out a full song. 

My first three projects/mixtapes/albums were made after I took a business founders program, Founder Institute, (which I eventually dropped out of because the vibe was just not right…) and yoga teacher training course in the summer of 2016. I graduated from the University of Ottawa in 2015 with an Honors Double Major in Biochemistry and Computer Science. I was still moving at a million and was writing too fast. I dropped Why So Rational?, Sincere Scenarios and No Explanations initially under the name Ash Darji and then switched it to Osho. Everyone used to call me Ash back in the day. Even my principle in high school back at AYJ (who was also our basketball coach) used to call me Ashman on the ball team. I switched it to Osho because I used to listen to a wide array of his talks and lectures and even bought a few of his books — The Book of Secrets and Intuition. I got really into self help books and philosophy at that time.

I then realized the Zen philosophy from Osho’s talks and I resonated deeply with the Buddhism way of life — So, I switched my moniker to Zen. However, I quickly learned as I was writing songs and raps that Zen was not me, and I was in search of something deeper. I like to learn topics in depth if my interest follows it. I am Hindu by birth, however, I was never really that religious at the time. As I was going about my days, I started to create a new language, drawing inspiration from Saanskrit and Hinduism. A phonetic language. That is how I came up with the name Zygo, and I added it as the first part of my moniker — to make it Zygo Zen. A year passed and as I got deeper in my artistic vision for my albums, Zen, just didn’t feel right. I then replaced Zen with Zayano (another name from the new language I was creating). 

In the Studio x Zygo Zayano

Zygo represents all my past lives, culminating to who you see today as Ashish. And Zayano represents my future lives, if I don’t achieve liberation from suffering and escape samsara — the cycle of death and re-birth. Zayano also represents the different states of consciousness that one can access through contemplative meditation. As I’m creating new albums and voxacanos, Zygo Zayano feels like the right fit. And if it’s not, I might just in the future release music under my name at birth, Ashish Darji.