SOMI

Sound. story. artist. woman.

Somi Kakoma — the vocalist, composer, writer, and performer known in the jazz world simply as ‘Somi’ — was born in Illinois to parents who emigrated from Rwanda and Uganda. Hailed by The New York Times as “a performer in full command of her instrument and powers”, she discovered her musical identity traversing the cultural bridge between Africa and America. That sense of discovery continues to guide a career in which she has has crafted “an elegant amalgam of the musics she loves and the bi-continental experiences that have shaped her life.”(NPR)

Somi’s last album, Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba is a deeply personal all-star tribute to Miriam Makeba, the groundbreaking South African singer and activist who turned 31 years of political exile during the apartheid era into a career of global triumph and influence. The album was ultimately awarded Best Jazz Vocal Performance at the inaugural Jazz Music Awards. It is also a companion project to the award-winning Off-Broadway musical (also about Miriam Makeba) that Somi wrote and starred in called “Dreaming Zenzile”. Both projects arrived on the heels of the unplanned release Holy Room - Live at Alte Oper with Frankfurt Radio Big Band that Somi decided to independently put out shortly after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The album ultimately earned her a 2021 Grammy® nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. With that nomination, Somi became the first African woman ever nominated in any of the Grammy® jazz categories.  The album also won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Vocal Album.

Ever committed to storytelling, Somi’s previous studio album Petite Afrique tells the story of African immigrants in the midst of a gentrified Harlem in

New York City, won the 2018 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album and featured special guest Aloe Blacc.  Petite Afrique was the highly anticipated follow-up to Somi's major label debut The Lagos Music Salon which was inspired by an 18-month creative sabbatical in Lagos, Nigeria and features special guests Angelique Kidjo and Common landed at #1 on US and international Jazz charts.  Straddling the worlds of African jazz, soul, and pop, Both albums earned her ECHO Award nominations in Germany for Best International Jazz Vocalist. 

Closely mentored by the legendary trumpet player Hugh Masekela, Somi has carved out her own path as an artist, scholar, and activist. She is a Doris Duke Artist, Soros Equality Fellow, a United States Artist Fellow, a TED Senior Fellow, a Sundance Theatre Fellow, and a former artist-in-residence at Park Avenue Armory, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance. She is also the founder of Salon Africana, a boutique cultural agency and record label. Often celebrated for her activism, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon asked Somi to perform at the United Nations’ General Assembly in commemoration of the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Somi holds undergraduate degrees in Cultural Anthropology and African Studies from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master’s degree in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and is currently a Graduate Prize Fellow working on her PhD at Harvard University’s Department of Music. In her heart of hearts, she is an East African Midwestern girl who loves family, poetry, and freedom