She cultivated her love for music through backyard jam sessions and endless artistic curiosity. NALEDI MASILO (Sangoma Chorus) is a zesty vocalist, composer and arts practitioner from Johannesburg, South Africa. She is currently a Graduate Prize Fellow at Harvard University and the founder of Salon Africana, a boutique cultural agency and record label. 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.
Somi 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 recently announced a new studio album honoring the great South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba, to be released in October 2021. Both albums earned her ECHO Award nominations in Germany for Best International Jazz Vocalist. Somi’s previous albums include Petite Afrique (2018 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album) and her major label debut The Lagos Music Salon, featuring special guests Angelique Kidjo and Common. Known in the jazz world simply as “Somi,” she has built a career of transatlantic storytelling and is the first African woman ever nominated in any Grammy jazz category (2021, Best Jazz Vocal Album for Holy Room 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Vocal Album). SOMI KAKOMA (Playwright, Miriam Makeba) was born in Illinois to immigrants from Uganda and Rwanda. PRONOUNS: She/Her/Hers DOWNLOAD FULL IMAGE
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