Vocalist Somi to Release New Album “What Does It Take to Bloom?” on August 7th, 2026 | LISTEN! Announces Tour Dates for 2026

GRAMMY-Nominated Vocalist Somi
Announces New Album
What Does It Take to Bloom?

Releases First Single “We’re All Falling”

June 3, 2026: Today, GRAMMY-nominated singer/songwriter Somi announced her new album What Does It Take to Bloom? out on August 7 via Salon Africana. A two-time NAACP Image Award winner and Doris Duke Artist Award recipient, her first collection of original songs in six years is an exploration into the ongoing process of staying faithful to oneself amid life’s dissonance. Written and recorded between Dakar, Lagos, Paris and New York City, the album weaves global sensibilities into an intimate meditation on uncertainty and change — asking whether growth is something we recognize as it’s happening, or once we’ve already been transformed.

Today, Somi shares the first single “We’re All Falling,” one of the project’s most affecting songs, that confronts mortality with striking clarity. Written during a season of personal loss, the song reflects on the sobering awareness that life is fragile and time is finite. Yet it is not consumed by despair. It becomes a call for grace and an invitation to live in the moment.

When asked about the album, she said “I wrote this body of work while traversing many places and losing many people. This album is a mirror of searching for where and how to take root in spite of that. I pray these songs offer each listener a sense of Home or, at the very least, a witnessing of me coming Home to myself.”

For Somi, every album is an act of place-making. Her catalog reads like a map of migration and memory – traversing the cultural bridge between Africa and America with records rooted in Nigeria, in Harlem, in the spirit and political inheritance of Miriam Makeba. On Somi’s forthcoming album, the terrain shifts. This time, the place being mapped is not a city, country, or collective memory. It’s the self.

Having spent years navigating the global jazz scene while also feeling adjacent to it, Somi defies categorization – embracing a hybrid of jazz, soul, highlife, spoken word, and her African heritage. What Does It Take to Bloom? marks an evolution of Somi’s sound, and finds her taking greater vocal risks while trusting her instincts more deeply. Abandoning the need to fit inside any artistic box, that refusal in itself is a form of blooming.

Ultimately, the album is grounded in finding belonging – recognizing that the journey towards wholeness is rarely linear and always unfinished. From the many experiences in life beyond our control to the embodied realities of womanhood, Somi explores the many facets of self-discovery that make her bloom. She hopes listeners will find themselves within the music; and if not, she offers the chance to witness her coming home to herself.

About Somi
Vocalist, composer, actor, and playwright Somi Kakoma is the Midwestern daughter of immigrants from Uganda and Rwanda.  She is known in the international jazz world simply as “Somi.” Her 2021 GRAMMY nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album made her the first African woman nominated in any of the GRAMMY Award’s jazz categories. Her last album, Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba, was 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.

Somi is a recipient of two NAACP Image Awards and a Doris Duke Artist Award. She is also a Soros Equality Fellow, United States Artist Fellow, TED Senior Fellow, Sundance Theatre Fellow, and the founder of Salon Africana – a boutique cultural agency and record label. Recently, Somi made her Broadway debut in the titular role and original production of the Tony Award-winning play Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. She holds degrees in Cultural Anthropology and African Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master’s degree in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, and a PhD in Critical Inquiry & Creative Practice from Harvard University.

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Tracklist:
1. Throw Something
2. Sometimes Love (ft. The Cavemen)
3. What Does It Take to Bloom?
4. Mama On Blooming
5. So You Want to Be a Woman (ft. Lakecia Benjamin)
6. Aiwah
7. Sugar
8. Mama On Tradition
9. Ngayaya
10. Lay It Down
11. Interlude: Skin To Skin
12. We’re All Falling
13. Love Could Be Anywhere

Select Tour Dates:
June 25 – New Haven, CT – International Festival Arts & Ideas
Sept. 17 – Champaign, IL – Krannert Center for Performing Arts
Sept, 18 – Evanston, IL – Space
Sept. 19 – Indianapolis, IN – Jazz Kitchen
Sept 27 – Saratoga Springs, NY – Skidmore College
Sept 29 – Madison, WI – Wisconsin Union Theater
Oct 1 – New York, NY – World Music Institute presents at Sony Hall
Oct 10 – Denver, CO – Dazzle
Oct 11 – San Francisco, CA – SFJazz Center
Oct 12 – Santa Cruz, CA – Kuumbwa

Additional dates to be added.

Missing Piece Group