Biography

Somi Kakoma is a Billboard charting and Grammy-nominated vocalist, composer, and writer. Born in Illinois to immigrants from Uganda and Rwanda, she is known in the jazz world simply as ‘Somi’. Having built a career of transatlantic storytelling, she is the first African woman ever nominated in any Grammy jazz category (2021 Best Jazz Vocal Album) for her live album 'Holy Room'. That album also won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Vocal Album). Somi’s previous albums include Petite Afrique (2018 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album) and her major label debut The Lagos Music Salon feat. special guests Angelique Kidjo and Common which landed at #1 on U.S. and international jazz charts. Both albums earned her ECHO Award nominations in Germany for Best International Jazz Vocalist. Somi recently announced a new studio album honoring the great South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba, to be released in July 2021. She is a Soros Equality Fellow, a USA Doris Duke 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. Somi holds undergraduate degrees in Anthropology and African Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master’s degree in Performance Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and is the founder of Salon Africana, a boutique cultural agency and record label.