Champaign-born Somi: playing Chicago ‘always feels like a homecoming’

Grammy-nominated jazz singer and composer Somi Kakoma — known professionally as Somi — was born in Champaign, Illinois, and began traveling internationally at a young age. The daughter of Rwandan and Ugandan parents, she spent half her time in Zambia and earned a degree in cultural anthropology and African studies from the University of Illinois, where her father was a professor. A master’s degree in performance studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts followed. ‘

Named a 2023 Doris Duke Artist, a prestigious annual honor that comes with a monetary award of $550,000, Somi is no stranger to high-profile accolades, including one from Billboard that described her as “all elegance and awe ... utterly captivating.” JazzTimes magazine gushed with equal gusto, declaring that her live performance has “the earthy gutsiness of Nina Simone, blended with the vocal beauty of Dianne Reeves.” 

Before her SCP Jazz concert March 13 at Symphony Center, where Somi will share a bill with tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia, she took a break while working in Nairobi to answer some questions about her musical life and burgeoning career. 

You were born in Champaign, Illinois, not too far from Chicago. What was your experience of Chicago growing up, whether from reputation, reading, listening or visits?  

Growing up in Champaign, I always thought of Chicago as a portal to the world. I didn’t spend a lot of time in the city, but it was where we went for cultural gatherings with the larger Midwestern African community. It was also where we went to travel overseas to other parts of the world. It wasn’t until my undergraduate years when I began to experience the city in new ways through my Chicagoan friends and classmates. Through them, I began to experience the culture of Chicago and the vast number of neighborhoods layered with history. It felt like a place where Black culture wasn’t peripheral, but foundational.

What kind of response are you expecting at Symphony Center? Is there anything distinct about how Chicago crowds receive your music? 

Being an Illinois girl, Chicago always feels like a bit of a homecoming. I find that audiences listen deeply. They’re emotionally generous but also discerning. I’m expecting curiosity, warmth and a willingness to journey with sound and story.

For those who are new to you in concert, what’s a good track they should check out before seeing you perform — and what should they be listening for in it? 

I’d suggest starting with the live version of my song “Holy Room” with the Frankfurt Radio Big Band. It captures a lot of what I try to do musically: storytelling that’s intimate but expansive, a sonic space that moves between vulnerability and invocation, and a meeting of worlds (African and Western) on the bandstand. I’d want new listeners to pay attention to the space in the song. What’s sung, what’s breathed, what’s being questioned and what’s left open. That’s where the emotional architecture of my work lives.

You mix African and American traditions. Where do they merge most clearly on stage?

African and American traditions merge onstage because they’ve always merged inside me. Perhaps most clearly in the rhythm and lyrics. When I perform, though, I’m not trying to blend traditions so much as tell the truth of my dual inheritance being raised here but strongly connected to my African heritage and immigrant experience. Rhythm becomes a way of evoking place, movement, home, migration; while narrative lets me speak to who I’ve been and who I’m becoming. Onstage, those worlds don’t compete; they recognize each other, and the music becomes a place where both can live at once. 

When you write, how does where you write or the place you’re writing about affect your movement, perception and vocal expression?  

Place shapes everything. My body moves differently depending on where I am — my breath, my pacing, even my sense of time. The voice (and the stories it holds) becomes a site where geography is felt, not just described.

After your father died in 2009, you spent 18 months in Nigeria. How did that experience change you personally and professionally in ways your work still reflects?

I moved to Nigeria because I wanted a place to grieve and heal. A place that had enough Africanisms to feel familiar and enough foreignness to push me out of my comfort zone. Nigeria gave me the sun, community and inspiration I desperately needed at that time. The album that came out of it, ˆThe Lagos Music Salon," not only changed my career but also formed my method of writing about, for and with place that is still so much a part of my work today.  

How do you get creatively unstuck? Certain techniques? Are there artists or sources that give you in-the-moment inspiration? 

I change the conditions. Usually, I travel somewhere warm. But more often, I go to the theater, take walks, read a book, meditate or — more recently — paint.  I’m often inspired deeply by writers like Toni Morrison or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, people who understand language, spirit and humanity. Their work is startlingly beautiful and profound; it gives me courage to come back to the page and try again.

Your 2024 tribute to South African artist and activist Miriam Makeba brought new ears to her music and new attention to her legacy. You’ve called her a “spacemaker.” What does she mean to you personally, and how do you try to convey that in your musical homages? 

Makeba gave me permission to unapologetically be my whole self and never feel like I have to compartmentalize my heritage from my artmaking. On my album “Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba,” I try not to imitate her sound, but to honor that same permission with my own voice. 

During your live sets, you often switch between English and a few East African languages. How does that affect the meaning of your music and the vibe in the room?  

When I move between languages, I’m less interested in explaining meaning than in asking a question of the room: what happens when we listen beyond comprehension? The shift creates a shared space of listening where meaning is sensed, not translated, and where everyone is asked to meet the music with openness rather than certainty.

Your vocal style has been compared to icons like Nina Simone, Cassandra Wilson and Dianne Reeves — the latter of whom you’ve performed with. How do you internalize their canon without imitation? 

Honestly, I’m never quite sure how to answer comparisons like that, because those artists are singular and foundational in their own right. I don’t think about internalizing their canon so much as listening to them with gratitude. If people hear an echo, I’m honored. That means the lineage is alive. I’m not trying to imitate anyone; I’m simply doing my work honestly and with care, and grateful to be heard in conversation with voices that have meant so much to the music.

After your Grammy nomination in 2021 for "Holy Room: Live at Alte Oper," were you emboldened to take artistic leaps? And what kind of pressure, good or bad, did it put on your writing for the next record since expectations were higher?  

While I was and am grateful to have been acknowledged and honored with a nomination, it was one moment in a life-long journey.  Choosing the path of an artist means you have to choose courage every day with or without acknowledgement. You cannot focus too much on outward acclaim because, at the end of the day, the work comes from listening inward.  

Which song or songs in your set are the most personal to you, and what life moments informed them? 

I have a hard time singling out one song as more personal than the others, because they all come from lived experience and what feels most personal can shift with every season or concert or moment in time. Each piece is shaped by a particular chapter of my life. Onstage, the set feels less like a collection of songs and more like a continuum of experiences I’ve moved through that are in conversation with each other, tracing my life and heart each night.

Your songs focus a lot on identity and the immigrant experience. That approach must have extra resonance for you and audiences these days considering what’s going on now in the U.S. and as ever, around the world. 

We’re living in a terrifying moment when belonging is being contested in unexpected places. I am the proud daughter of immigrants who worked hard to give me life, love, shelter, education ... all of the things we all want and deserve. My music insists on the dignity and humanity of people who live between places, languages and histories. I hope the songs offer not answers, but a celebration of our differences and all that we have to share with or learn from each other.