Tour Dates for World Music Artist - Somi | TheUrbanMusicScene.com

After her recent debut at #2 on the Billboard World Music Charts for her new album If The Rains Come First, singer-songwriter Somi starts her spring tour today with a high-profile slot at SXSW, followed by stops in Philadelphia, New York, DC and more.

A stunning collection of self-penned story-based songs, If The Rains Come First is a meditation on opening ourselves up to life’s blessings and challenges much in the way that we accept the rain and all that it brings. As The Boston Globe recently put it, Somi’s new album “glistens with the sheen of an almost impossibly perfect cosmopolitanism.” Singing in English and three East African languages, Somi’s vocal delivery is subtle yet the power she exerts is enormous. Her artistic evolution is indisputable.

Born in Illinois to immigrants from Rwanda and Uganda, African and Jazz legacies are always crucial to her sound. Often compared to the likes of Miriam Makeba, Sarah Vaughn, Cassandra Wilson, and Cesaria Evora, her new album also features the legendary trumpeter Hugh Masekela, a longtime Somi fan and mentor. While Somi and her band continue to perform at venues in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, the globetrotting chanteuse says, “At the end of the day, I still know who I am and where home is before, during, and after the rain—it’s in the music.”

Somi tour dates:

3/18/10: SXSW’s All Music Is World Music Showcase, Hosted by Public Radio International’s Marco Werman – Momo’s (618 West 6th Street), Austin, TX
3/19/10: Kimmel Center for Performing Arts, with Danilo Perez, Philadelphia, PA

3/22/10: Women’s Jazz Festival at Schomberg Ctr’s Langston Hughes Auditorium, NY, NY
3/27/10: Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project Launch at National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC
5/11/10: Somi interviewed by Hugh Masekela, for 651 Arts: Live & Outspoken at LIU’s Kumble Theater, Brooklyn, NY
6/19/10: Summer Solstice Jazz Festival, East Lansing, MI
6/21/10: Madison Square Park (Rising Star Series), New York, NY

Download a free MP3 from If The Rains Come First today at

http://www.obliqsound.com/somitour2010