Bio : Somi

For as long as I can remember, I have known Miriam Makeba’s voice.  As a result, I feel like I know her personally.  She is familiar and warm.  A compass, a space-maker.  The original African superstar.  Her message of social justice and the humanity of Black lives still encourages us today.  This project is about honoring the vast and immeasurable contribution she made to popular, folk, and jazz music on behalf of a people, a continent.  This project is in response to the blacklisting and somehow sustained erasure of her voice that began when she chose to marry Stokely Carmichael at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and to demand her rightful place in the larger cultural archive of the United States in particular and the world in general.  On a more personal note, however, this album is my attempt to honor the unapologetic voice of an African woman who inevitably made room for my own journey and that of countless other African artists.  In short, I owe her.  We all do.  I invited a number of special guests from across the continent and diaspora to be a part of this album because it has always been clear to me that to celebrate her is to celebrate “us”.  It is my hope that Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba invites each listener to revisit her original recordings, to rediscover her story, and to – finally - remember her:  Zenzile Miriam Makeba, first lady of African song.