There
invariably comes a time in any jazz festival (day #2) when I begin
to tire of one brilliantly improvised solo after another, and
long for music that stands on its own as composition, that resists
the monotonal, lobotomizing seductions of ‘groove,’
that modulates, changes key, that makes me beholding to its architecture
for long-term appreciation. These qualities were sumptuously supplied
at Montreal’s
2009 International Jazz Festival by relatively
unknown singer-songwriter Somi, of Rwandan and Ugandan heritage,
now living in The Big Apple of a dream that has come somewhat
true, if only in Europe.
Having
spent time in both Zambia and Kenya, Somi’s source material
is almost as extensive as her multi-octave voice that can produce
a murmur one moment and a high pitched wail the next. What is
most gratifying in her music is the natural ability to refract
her myriad geographical influences such that they disappear in
her person to emerge in compositions which reflect her complex
relationship with place, politics and of course love and love
lost. On stage, she is the full-figured embodiment of equipoise
and distinction, the audience attracted as much to the person
as her repertoire. I can’t imagine her not being invited
back to Montreal for a series of concerts.
Her first
album, Eternal Motive, was recorded in 2003, and while
showing promise (“Keep Moving”), most of the tracks
sounded somehow familiar in both their composition (a mix of soul
and R & B) and delivery. But with the release of Red Soil
in My Eyes (2007), Somi has come into her own with wonderfully
wrought songwriting that completely wowed the capacity crowd at
the Montreal Jazz Festival’s newest venue, The Astral. If
most of the assembled weren’t quite sure what to expect,
they emerged champagne bubbly over their new discovery: her CD
sold out within minutes of the performance which certainly ranks
as one of this year’s festival surprises. Not unlike Montreal’s
Coral Egan, Somi’s music defies category, in part because
the compositions are so closely identified with the person.
The increasingly
short-shrifted art of songwriting depends on several elements
that all great (lasting) music features: a considerate dynamic
range, multiple recombinations of voice (when sung) and instrument,
and most importantly, a music that effectively and purposefully
(towards a conclusion) modulates so we don’t tire of it.
As listeners, we all look for the hook, and then to be taken somewhere
unexpected such that we yearn to return again and again –
to The American Song Book, for example.
In respect
to the above criteria, Somi, for her Montreal debut, left no doubt
that after an arduous apprenticeship she has matured exponentially
as a songwriter. Almost without exception, every composition featured
astonishing invention, breathtaking ascents and descents, and
shifts in texture, tone and mood that turned every song into an
exploration. In making a point of performing with and not in front
of her band, Somi didn’t hesitate to draw from the deep
wells of Toru Dodo on piano and Michael Olatuja on bass. If she's
not strictly a jazz singer (in point of fact the only thing she
is strictly is herself), much of her music is jazz inflected:
more emphasis on cymbals than skins, while the forward thrusting
piano solos look to the unconventional harmonies and dissonances
supplied by jazz for their emotive effects. But it is the preciously
unpredictable that invigorates Somi’s repertoire. From out
of nowhere, a thrashing world-beat will suddenly evoke the new
Africa only to marvellously morph into a plaintive tribal cadence.
Despite
the healing and catharsis that underpins her music, Somi would
rather close her eyes and clench than let loose, even when the
music invites an almost dervish exhibition of frenzy. And if her
retina-rolling attire is anything but low keyed, her stage sensuality
is implied and piquantly partnered with measured restraint in
her physical gestures, the effect of which is to further egg on
audiences nearly begging to go Vesuvius.
What
sets Somi apart from other very good singers is her itinerant
voice that’s comprised of an irresistible cocktail of voices.
Unlike most singers who are most effective in the middle register,
Somi is strongest, purest (à la Om Koultoum) in the upper
where she does not do most of her singing. Like a trained opera
singer, she’s one of the few contemporary vocalists who
can shape her voice so that in the middle range it can induce
the consolations of blue velvet on the flesh, or from deep within
produce a sad, hollow tenor that can conjure up desolation or
malaise. And when the song calls for it, she can instantaneously
rise to the occasion of high-octave pain and supplication or revert
to a mood altering falsetto. It only takes a song and dance to
realize that there isn’t much she can’t do with a
voice that is always in service of song, equal to the passions
of a fully realized woman who is able to transmute the sum of
her varied experience into significant music.
Somi
is the real deal, and with the emergence of a highly distinctive
musical interval that is tantamount to personal signature, she
has every reason to expect that Red Soil in My Eyes will
not only create a critically appreciative fan base in North America,
but will soon elicit deserved comparison to the work of Nina Simone
and Cassandra Wilson at the very top of their game.
Despite
the healing and catharsis that underpins her music, Somi would
rather close her eyes and clench than let loose, even when the
music invites an almost dervish exhibition of frenzy. And if her
retina-rolling attire is anything but low keyed, her stage sensuality
is implied and piquantly partnered with measured restraint in
her physical gestures, the effect of which is to further egg on
audiences nearly begging to go Vesuvius. 
