Somi’s album, The Lagos Music Salon, transcends geography

Jazz vocalist and songwriter Somi didn’t intend to write an album when she left New York for Lagos, Nigeria in 2011. “I think people assumed that I moved there specifically to go and write. I think I wanted a change. I had gone through some big personal changes and shifts in my life that can get quite sobering. I lost my father,” says the East African chanteuse by phone to the Banner.

“When you go through something that weighted and personal and intimate, it’s sobering. Those big life changes are sobering in a certain way — at least on my own journey. They are, to my own perspective. They have been. I just wanted to set the way, to have a chance to heal my heart and to be still, and to see what happened once I had the chance to do so,” she says.

While in Lagos searching for quiet, one of Somi’s former NYU graduate advisors offered her the opportunity to attend an international teaching artist–in-residence program just underway. She decided to try it out for seven weeks, to see if it would work. “It gave me a chance to kind of look around and gave me a soft landing,” Somi says. Initially, she was going to stay for 15 months, but ended up living in Nigeria for 18 months.

African grooves

Author: Glynis CarpenterSomi

During that year and a half in Lagos, the Illinois-born singer (whose parents emigrated from Rwanda and Uganda) wrote the critically-acclaimed album, The Lagos Music Salon. Released in 2014 on Sony’s OKeh Records, the album landed at #1 on the iTunes Jazz Chart, #1 on the Amazon Jazz Vocal Chart, and #1 on the Amazon Pop Vocal Chart.

A fusion of jazz, soul and pop tinged with African grooves, beats and melodies, the 18-track album also features two duets—one with Angelique Kidjo and the second with Common. The song Lady Revisited reunites Somi with friend Kidjo, with whom she has opened in the past and whom she considers a “big sister”. Rapper, actor and now an Academy Award winner, Common joins Somi on the track When Rivers Cry. The song “is really kind of a reflection on Africa’s green policy and do we or don’t we have them, and what’s our past, future and present circumstance environmentally,” the singer explains. The track also is a tribute to environmentalist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, who passed away in 2011.

When Somi wrote When Rivers Cry, she really wanted an MC because that’s how she heard the rhythm. It was “very hip hop driven,” she says. “…Common brought a global perspective to the storyline, just to understand that it’s not just about our locality, whether we live in an African city or a western city but just, what we choose to do when we choose to recycle. We’re actually impacting somebody else across the globe and even when we choose not to, we’re impacting somebody across the globe. I really wanted to make it a conversation that transcended geography.”

The singer, who has been touring both in the U.S. and around the globe since the beginning of the year promoting The Lagos Music Salon, performs tonight (July 2nd) at the 36th Annual Montreal International Jazz Festival. This is her second appearance at the world-renowned music festival, where she made her debut in 2009. “I might do a couple of older songs just for some of the people who supported me at a distance from Canada over the years since my last time there but mostly I’ll be sharing the work from my latest record.”

Somi is very happy with the album and her personal journey in making The Lagos Music Salon. “I think it’s going to be a moment that I’ll always look back at in my life, I least I hope it is, and I’m so proud of that courage and also the work that came out of it as a result. Nigeria is a cultural giant and I was just excited to have a chance to tap into that.”