Singer-songwriter Somi will be the first to tell you that she is the combination of multiple layers. But throughout the different sheets that make up the chantuese, she is at her deepest core, a capable storyteller. Whether the issue at hand is about protecting the environment in “When Rivers Cry” or if it’s about prostitution in “Brown Round Things,” Somi has the uncanny ability of transporting her audience by one flick of the “press play” button on their laptops. Also take note that the words written in the previous sentence were carefully chosen to read “uncanny ability” and not “natural talent.” This isn’t to say that Somi has no natural talent – how many other cello-playing cultural anthropologist with a Master’s in performance do you know? What we are trying to get at however is that the ability to convey a story and put yourself in another individual’s shoes to write a story about it takes courage. It takes guts to move away from the comfort of your own home and live in another part of the world for 18 months. It takes even more bravery to document those 18 months into an 18-track album.

We recently had the extreme privilege to chat with Somi and discuss The Lagos Music Salon, her latest release via the very legendary OKeh Records. Scroll down to read our convo as well as the premiere of her the “Brown Round Things” video featuring Ambrose Akinmusire.

Revive: You’ve mentioned in previous interviews how you love jazz’s demand for improvisation and how that’s a metaphor for your social and cultural experience. Could you talk about that a little more?

Somi: My discovery of jazz is somewhat accidental. I think that Black communities in the U.S. have an opportunity to explore and celebrate the music from a very young age. But being the child of immigrants – not to say that Africans don’t listen to jazz – who did not listen to so much jazz, I listened to a lot of other types of music. I listened to Western and African music, but I didn’t really jazz at all. If my parents did listen to it, then I didn’t recognize or appreciate it at the time.

I have very distinct memories of being a college student and hearing Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, or Sarah Vaughan. I remember that point quite well and my discovery of it was quite late. But even though my discovery was accidental, jazz has been this liberating gift. It’s freed me because improvisation and the musical conversation on the bandstand and with the audience are so fundamental to the idiom. It’s a space for me to be a lot of different things.

While it’s my discovery has been accidental, it’s been a beautiful gift of freedom. This isn’t to say that there isn’t freedom in other genres, but it is to say that I appreciate the freedom in jazz. That might be why I’m standing in the room.

R: Let’s talk about “Brown Round Things.” It’s a difficult subject to talk about. What drew you to bring to light such an intricate topic?

S: Have you seen the video yet?

R: Yes, I did and I was amazed at how daring it was. It’s definitely a big issue in a lot of cities worldwide.

S: I guess there are two things. The first is the conversation about sex workers and prostitution. What inspires the song was seeing women working at night on a very particular street in Lagos. Seeing that brought to mind women in all sorts of places all over the world. But I kept thinking that I’ve been blessed to come from a family that is large and loving and [we’re] always in each other’s business – with good intentions of course. So there’s a lot of love and there’s always accountability. So I kept thinking about the story of someone who was once a girl-child and is now in a line of work that is dangerous.

I’m not trying place to judgment on the work because there are people who believe that they should be able to do what they want and they don’t mind the work. That’s fine; everyone can live his or her own life and I’m not trying to place judgment on it. I wanted to understand it within the African context because it’s so contrarian to everything that the African cultural value system is supposed to be based on.

The only thing I usually say about this song is that it’s about the lost of innocence. I wanted to know about who they were and what their story was. We see them on the road and people are very quick to pass judgment and not to respect them. The point is that they have their own story and they have their own difficult life. It’s about remembering the humanity of those women and reflecting on that loss of innocence.

R: The Lagos Music Salon gives the listener this really vibrant landscape of this bustling metropolis. You could have written about any other city in Africa, what was it about Lagos that drew you to create an album about it?

S: Lagos is a very interesting place because it is the commercial capital of Nigeria, which has a population of 120 million people. The city of Lagos itself has 20 million people, so it’s larger than New York. One out of every four Africans is Nigerian; one of every six black people in the planet is Nigerian. It’s hardly a numbers game, but they really are a cultural science on the continent and throughout the Diaspora.

I was very curious about the work that was coming from there. It’s very much about what Lagos is, the layers that social and political history that have accrued there for generations. It’s not about this moment during the last couple of decades because of pop music and oil money; it’s literally generations of literature, music, film, fashion and visual art. It’s just such a cultural hotspot! So that made me very curious.

I went there in 2010 for a jazz festival with my band and I had a chance to see the parallels between New York and Lagos. I love that New York is a hard city but it’s deeply rewarding and Lagos is that way also. I think we choose to live in New York! We’re almost choosing to complicate our lives in some way.

R: [laughs] Yes!

S: Right? But at the same time, there is this fight for beauty. I think I saw that in Lagos; I saw that fight for beauty within a very hard city. I also saw a kind of energy – there’s a certain kind of ambition that’s there. There’s communities for intellectuals and artists there much in the same way that we have here in New York. I thought that it was fantastic to have that [energy] in the African context.

I also went there because of the proximity. Because Lagos is such a big commercial hub, it’s a direct flight from anywhere in the world. So I was able to travel to the US and Europe if I needed to tour. I also wanted to be somewhere comfortable that had enough Africanism that I felt at home, but enough foreignness to keep my perspective really fresh. Had I gone to East Africa where I’m from, I would have gone there with an expectation of past visits. I was allowed and excused to be able to make mistakes in Lagos because I wasn’t from there.

I loved that it was always about discovery and it was a very personal and private journey. I feel like I just scratched the surface. I started seeing these other things just as I was leaving.

R: This could just be me, but it’s hard not to look at your time at Lagos as sort of an ethnomusicology research trip. Is the album influenced by your undergraduate studies in cultural anthropology?

S: I wouldn’t yes, but you’re not the first person who said, “This is like some ethno musical or ethnographic project.” Honestly, it wasn’t. But I think it really comes down to layers because my lens as an artist, a human being, a woman, and an African is informed by what I’ve read and what I’ve experienced. Those things inform the lens, but they’re all just layers. It’s the same thing with being a musician. You might study all sorts of technique, but you’re not thinking about it when you’re on stage – you’re just doing.

I was actually working on an entirely different body of music, which I finished but I decided not to release first because this is where my heart and my head is right now and I wanted to say this first. I’m sure it did in some ways, but it definitely wasn’t something that I was consciously trying do.

 Purchase your copy of ‘Lagos Music Salon’ via iTunes. Stay tuned for the second part of our interview with Somi.