Somi: An
Ancestrally Rich Voice Electrifying the 21st Century
“One of the cool
things about seeing Somi’s show Friday was that, even while the great
voices are steadily falling silent, new ones are arriving – and she’s got one.”
Jon Streeter, Board of
Directors for SF Jazz
Imagine yourself at the
electrifying, eclectic and global intersection of Lagos Boulevard, Kigali Way
and New York Avenue. Well that’s exactly
where I found myself transported from to the Red Poppy Gallery smack dab in San
Francisco’s Mission District, on a recent Saturday in September, with an intergenerational
assembly of folks who came to feast on the voice of Somi. Her ancestrally rich and sometimes haunting
voice scaled walls, brought blooms onto flowers and poured out into Folsom
Street, where it cast a net of light out into the Universe. In a space not much larger than my living
room and seating about one hundred people, she “Gingered Us Slowly” and had us
testifying to “Four African Women,” her homage to the High Priestess of Soul Nina
Simone. I first got a “taste” of her
voice when she performed at the London wedding of Ashley Shaw Scott Adjaye and
David Adjaye.
The range in her voice
crosses deep rivers and cascades right into the ravines of your soul. She soothed my chakras when she dropped her
tall brown frame into tribal movements to catch notes and bring them up out
through her vocal chords, right after navigating them right up out of her
heart. Mesmerizingly beautiful in voice
and presence, she performed a ninety minute show that transported us through
the lyrics of “Last Song,” Shine Your
Eye” and “When Rivers Cry,” a piece filled with moral urgency, that she
performs on her CD with the rapper Common.
While “Two-Dollar Day” is a kind of soliloquy challenging the absurdity
of making and trying to live on two dollars a day, “Brown Round Things” calls
up the nefarious world of human trafficking of innocents. She is a marvelous singer-lyricist and wrote all
of the songs performed on The Lagos Music
Salon.
While it is clear that
her music is infused with African, R&B, mid-twentieth century jazz and soul
influences, an eighteen month stay in Lagos helped her create a powerful and
vibrant “New African Jazz.” There is
such a span of cultural history in her powerful voice. The spirits of Sarah
Vaughan, Nina Simone and Miram Makeba surely sat up and took notice, as Somi’s
distinct style also conjured up theirs. On
“Shine Your Eyes,” her voice also took me into moments with Joni Mitchell with
some Sonia Sanchez riffin’ off her tongue.
It also takes great musicians to carry a
singer’s vocals the distance and my word did they ever carry—all the way out
there to an ancestral shout out to Nigerian icon Fela Kuti and an intergalactic
wave to Sun Ra. Drummer Otis Brown III
took the beats way deep across the centuries back home to the
“Motherland.” Ben Williams “burnt” up that
malachite looking bass and guitarist Liberty Ellman wove an improvisational
touch.
But it was pianist Toru Dodo, along with Tomi,
who took my spirit to every corner of the Universe it needed to be in those
moments. Dodo played that piano with
every cell in his body and molecule in his mind. I could have sworn Somi and Dodo’s roots were
up out of the same village. And at some
point in the not too distant future, I can just see Bill T. Jones choreographing
“Love JuJu#1 or the Alvin Ailey Company performing “Last Song.”
I’m so eager to return to the global
intersection of Lagos Boulevard, Kigali Way and New York Avenue and meet Somi
there.
