BIO
There is a moment in every ÈDÈM SOUL performance when the room shifts. It happens during a Djembe rhythm, or a phrase sung in Ga, or a single sustained note on the harp — and suddenly, the audience is no longer watching. They are inside the music. They describe it afterward as a trance, a recharging, a return to something they had forgotten. That experience is not accidental. It is the life's work of Edem K. Garro.
A first-generation American with deep Ghanaian heritage, Edem grew up immersed in the music, language, and spiritual life of the Ga people of Ghana, West Africa. In her household, music was inseparable from prayer, from community, from identity. It was never a performance — it was a practice. That understanding has shaped everything she creates.
As ÈDÈM SOUL, Edem is a composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist fluent in over 12 instruments — from the Djembe and hand percussion to the Harp, Ukulele, Guitar, Violin, and Bass. She sings in both English and Ga, and her sound moves freely across genre: Afrocentric soul, world music, folk, singer-songwriter, and electronic — not because she lacks focus, but because she refuses to let genre become a ceiling. What unifies her work is not a sound, but a purpose: the use of music as a tool for healing, cultural preservation, and human connection.
That purpose has taken her far. Edem is a 5X award winner and 15X Omaha Entertainment and Arts Award nominee, including wins for Best Soul Artist (2018) and Outstanding World Music (2020, 2021, 2022, and 2025). She became Omaha's first Capitol District Musician in Residence, accumulating over 1,700 performance hours. She has performed at the Joslyn Art Museum, Kiewit Luminarium, Washington State University, and the National Park Service, and held residencies at the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology and PLAYA Summer Lake in Oregon. In 2020, she was named a national finalist in Lincoln's Chart Your Course competition — one of four chosen from over 1,600 entrants — and performed at a pre-Grammy event for members of the Recording Academy and the Ford Motor Company.
A teaching artist with the Nebraska Arts Council, a past youth mentor with Omaha Girls Rock, and a motivational speaker, Edem understands that her platform extends beyond the stage. Her mission is singular, even when her work is multifaceted: to ensure that the sounds, stories, and spirit of her people are not only preserved — but passed forward.
"Some music you hear, ÈDÈM SOUL you feel. A 5X award-winning global soul artist weaving the future of sound that heals."