Somi: new songs herald a sense of renewed momentum

There’s quite a buzz about Somi at the moment, and it’s not just because she’s brand new. With at least one major label expressing serious interest in signing the Illinois-born singer of Rwandan and Ugandan origin after a recent jazz club show in Paris it’s not as if Somi has not already paid her dues. Take If The Rains Come First on ObliqSound, the label that put out some of Lionel Loueke’s early work. If The Rains… followed Eternal Motive a decade ago and the World Village release Red Soil in My Eyes. But her most recent album was the 2011 live album recorded in New York, Live at Jazz Standard that really got people talking. And more recently the singer has come up with several new songs written in Lagos over the past year that has upped the ante. Somi sings in English and several African languages and it’s a multicultural cosmopolitan approach that joins the dots between Nina Simone and Miriam Makeba. Somi has been championed in the past by no less a figure than Hugh Masekela who guested on If The Rains Come First, and the singer/songwriter has also worked with John Legend, Cassandra Wilson, Mos Def and Paul Simon. The title track of ‘If The Rains Come First’ is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaO1rp8yf5o