The Conversation Every Family Has, Set to Music

Debbie Soul brings “Ije The Musical,” a story of family, culture and chasing your own dreams, to Hollywood

By Katina Fields | Los Angeles Tribune

LOS ANGELES – Almost every family has had the conversation. Someone clears their throat at the dinner table and announces a plan nobody saw coming: a new city, a new career, a life that looks nothing like the one their parents pictured. Then the room goes quiet.

“Ije The Musical: An Immigrant’s Journey” lives inside that silence. This October, it fills the room with African rhythms, soulful melodies and dance as it returns to Hollywood for two nights, Oct. 9 and 10, at Barnsdall Gallery Theatre.

The woman who brought it back won’t be watching from the wings. Debbie Soul, the production’s executive producer, is also in the cast as Mama Okafor, a mother facing the day her daughter is ready to go. It’s a role she chose on purpose.

“Most of us have been Adaorah at some point in our lives, the one trying to explain a dream to the people who love us,” Debbie said. “Playing Mama Okafor let me stand on the other side of that conversation. She isn’t the villain. She loves her daughter so much that letting go feels like losing her, and I think every parent in that audience will recognize the feeling.”

At the heart of the story is Adaorah, a young African woman caught between the traditions of her family and her dream of building an independent life abroad. Ashley Agunbiade returns to the role, which she originated in 2025 at The Barnsdall Gallery Theatre in Hollywood. The story unfolds inside one household, but it asks a question almost anyone can feel: how do you honor where you come from without losing who you’re becoming?

“Ije is about the journey so many of us understand, the journey between where we come from and who we are becoming,” Soul said. “You can love your family, honor your culture and still have dreams that take you in a different direction.”

Carrying a production and a leading role at the same time takes a particular kind of stamina. “In the afternoon I’m checking on costumes and ticket counts, and by curtain I’m somebody’s mother,” she said. “The hardest part is turning off the producer. Once I step onstage, I have to trust my team and simply be Mama Okafor.”

If the double duty sounds ambitious, it fits the arc of her career. Debbie Soul, whose given name is Deborah Olufa, earned a scholarship to study voice through the Musical Society of Nigeria, or MUSON, and went on to sing at the MUSON Jazz Festival and on stages in Italy and the United Kingdom. Her work later grew into recording, producing and entrepreneurship. She founded Debbie Soul Entertainment to amplify African voices, open doors for underrepresented artists and bring culturally rooted stories to wider audiences. “Ije” is that mission with the house lights down.

The music is a defining force in the production. Kehinde Oretimehin, whose credits include Saro, Wakaa, Fela and the Kalakuta Queens, and Moremi the Musical, composed and arranged the original score while serving as Artistic Director. Debbie Soul also contributes original pieces, bringing intricate musicality and soulful expression to the score. Dr. DSharp serves as Music Director, leading the live band.

“I wanted the music to sound like home to anyone who grew up with it, and like an invitation to anyone who didn’t,” Oretimehin said. “The traditional rhythms carry Adaora’s family and everything they hold onto. As she starts to dream beyond them, the score opens up and moves with her. By the end, you can hear both worlds in the same song.”

There’s something fitting about this story landing in Hollywood. For more than a century, the neighborhood has sent American stories out to the world. “Ije” carries an African story in the other direction, into a city built by people who arrived from somewhere else with their languages, their recipes, their music and the hopes of the families they left behind. 

“I want audiences to see the beauty of African culture,” Debbie said, “but I also want them to recognize themselves in Adaorah’s story.”

They likely will. You don’t need to be African, or an immigrant, to know the feeling of someone else’s plans for your life pulling against your own. Adaorah isn’t running from home. She’s deciding which pieces of it to carry with her, while the people who raised her learn that loving someone doesn’t mean choosing their future for them.

“Coming back to Adaorah feels like visiting an old friend who has grown up a little,” Agunbiade said. “The first time, I played her courage. This time I understand her guilt, too, how much it hurts to disappoint the people you love while you’re trying to become yourself. I think that’s the part audiences will carry home with them.”

On a screen, a family standoff like this plays out at a safe distance. At Barnsdall, tucked inside Barnsdall Art Park, it happens a few feet away, with the band, the dancers and a mother and daughter at their breaking point all sharing the same room. Debbie Soul will be right in the middle of it.

She could have stayed behind the curtain. Instead, she stepped into the story, and this October, she’s inviting Los Angeles to step in with her.

“Ije The Musical: An Immigrant’s Journey” will be presented Friday, Oct. 9, 7pm and Saturday, Oct. 10, at 3:00pm and 7:30pm at Barnsdall Gallery Theatre, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles. Tickets range from $55-$75 are available through https://www.ijethemusical.org/tickets

Creative team: Debbie Soul, executive producer; Kehinde Oretimehin and Debbie Soul, composer, arranger and artistic director; Olumense Mavryk Omonjahio, Amiable director,  Dr Dsharp, music director and band leader; Toyin Lufadeju,  event manager; Mercy Mburu and Peju Oluwole, production supervising stage manager and assistant director.