Somi

Name: Somi
Start: 2026-03-12T19:30:00-05:00
Location: The Parkway Theater

Schedule

Thu, 12 Mar, 2026 at 07:30 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

The Parkway Theater | Minneapolis, MN

Thursday, March 12, 2026
6:30 pm Doors // 7:30 pm Music
All Ages
$60 ($73.84 w. taxes/fees) Premium Seating
$50 ($62.31 w. taxes/fees) Preferred Reserved Seating
$40 ($49.61 w. taxes/fees) Advance General Admission
$45 ($52 w. taxes/fees) At The Door General Admission
Ticket purchases are final and non-refundable
“A virtuosic performer in full command of her instrument and powers.” – The New York Times
“African grooves, supple jazz singing and compassionate social consciousness; She is both serious and seductive.” – The New York Times
Vocalist, composer, actor, and playwright Somi Kakoma is a true renaissance woman, known in the jazz world simply as ‘Somi’. The Midwestern daughter of parents who emigrated from Rwanda and Uganda, Somi found her musical voice traversing cultural bridges between Africa and the US, weaving Afropop, soul, and jazz into her sumptuous, elegant, deeply grooving body of work. A return to her singer-songwriter roots, the music on her latest release was composed in Lagos, Dakar, Paris, and New York, offering a sonic travelogue that weaves deeply personal storytelling with modern jazz and African sensibilities.
“[Her music is] a party and a history lesson, it’s a manifesto and a poem, it’s a call to dance and think at once” – PopMatters

Somi’s fifth studio album, Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba, is a companion project to the critically acclaimed original musical Dreaming Zenzile that Somi also wrote and starred in Off-Broadway as a tribute to the great South African singer and activist. Prior to Zenzile and at the height of the 2020 global lockdown, Somi released an unplanned live album called Holy Room featuring the Frankfurt Radio Big Band that ultimately earned her a 2021 Grammy® nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album and made her the first African woman ever nominated in any of the Grammy® jazz categories.
Somi is a recipient of the 2023 Doris Duke Artist Award, two NAACP Image Awards for Best Vocal Jazz Album, and the inaugural Jazz Music Award for Best Vocal Performance. She is also a Soros Equality Fellow, a United States Artist Fellow, a TED Senior Fellow, a Sundance Theatre Fellow, and the founder of Salon Africana – a boutique cultural agency and record label.
Recently, Somi made her Broadway debut in the title role of the critically acclaimed new play Jaja’s African Hair Braiding by Joceyln Bioh. Somi holds degrees in Cultural Anthropology and African Studies from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master’s degree in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, and is currently working on her PhD at Harvard University’s Department of Music. In her heart of hearts, she is an East African Midwestern girl who loves family, poetry, and freedom.