Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, August 14, 2014
Sophisticated and seductive, Somi's new album The Lagos Music Salon developed out of the American singer and songwriter's repeated visits to Lagos, Nigeria, where, as Teju Cole's liner notes put it, she "absorbed the city's truth into her musical imagination."
From the cloudy, slightly Bacharach-esque lost-love song "Still Your Girl" to the intricate dance-pop of "Lady Revisited" (an answer to Fela Kuti's "Lady"), and from the sunny horn-and-percussion-fueled Afropop of "Akobi: First Born S(u)n" to the chilling verses of Somi's transformation of Nina Simone's "Four Women" into "Four African Women," these songs encompass Somi's jazz and world music roots while expressing her deep connection to both the cultural glories and the daily tragedies of West Africa.
"Two-Dollar Day" depicts "a woman on the road / She got mouths to feed / Her man died last year / Now she works to the bone."
"When Rivers Cry" features rapper Common and laments the fouling of the continent's waterways: "Feet crushing plastic / Moving windows tossing bottles dry.Waste and dust still choking road and sky / The trees remember days of plenty / Before rivers cried." (Angélique Kidjo and gospel group In His Image also make guest appearances on the album.)
read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Interview-Somi-on-Her-Major-Label-Debut-The-5691132.php
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