SALON AFRICANA is a boutique production agency & record label founded by award winning vocalist-composer and writer Somi Kakoma. We produce and curate experiences that strive to challenge homogenized notions of African cultural production. We celebrate the sound and story of artists who interrogate African identity politics with a cosmopolitan spirit, the vigor of urban hybridization, and a deep connection to heritage. We invite audiences to reimagine the global Black experience and to honor the transnational, immigrant, and indigenous communities these artists emerged from.
SOMI KAKOMA, Founder + Artistic Director
(Photography by Anna Longworth)
WHY SALON AFRICANA? Somi has always privileged the use of cultural space to give agency, voice, and visibility to contemporary African experiences. In 2008, when Somi founded the award-winning nonprofit organization New Africa Live as an effort to give more visibility to other emerging African musicians by producing multidisciplinary arts events to entertain, educate, and create awareness of the value of African culture in a globalized world. New Africa Live became a major disruptor within the New York arts presenter establishment because the events identified clear blind spots in both cultural programming and audience/market outreach. Thoughtfully bridging this gap, Somi was able to introduce the likes of Somali hip-hop emcee K’Naan, Nigerian soul-singer Asa, Soweto art-rock band BLKJKS, Kenyan indie collective Electric Golden, and many other buzz-worthy artists to the New York market while catering to a grossly underserved African audience who had rarely seen representations of their communities or experiences on stage. Despite the now feverish interest in African culture today, there is an urgent need for more intentional spaces of cultural belonging that ensure that a nuanced and artful representation of contemporary African experiences are more widely seen on the global cultural stage.
Head to www.somimusic.com to learn more ABOUT SOMI.
Development of Salon Africana was supported in part by the Soros Equality Fellowship, which is funded and administered by the Open Society Institute (OSI). The opinions expressed herein are Salon Africana's own and do not necessarily express the views of OSI.
