2025 Women's Jazz Fest: Somi

The Schomburg Center’s annual Women's Jazz Festival (WJF) is celebrating 33 years of centering Black women in the field of jazz. The Women’s Jazz Festival was founded in 1992 by then Harlem resident and jazz vocalist, Melba Joyce. Year after year, the festival and its curators have brought together musicians, dancers and a melding of musical genres to deliver an exciting series of concerts featuring some of the best-known and emerging talent by women in jazz today. The 2025 festival will be held in person on March 10,17, and 24.

Join us for opening night of the Women's Jazz Festival with the return of Somi!

Somi Kakoma — the vocalist, composer, writer, and performer known in the jazz world simply as ‘Somi’ — was born in Illinois to parents who emigrated from Rwanda and Uganda.  Hailed by The New York Times as “a performer in full command of her instrument and powers”, she  discovered her musical identity traversing the cultural bridge between Africa and America. That sense of discovery continues to guide a career in which she has has crafted “an elegant amalgam of the musics she loves and the bi-continental experiences that have shaped her life.”(NPR)

Somi’s last album, Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba is a deeply personal all-star tribute to Miriam Makeba, the groundbreaking South African singer and activist who turned 31 years of political exile during the apartheid era into a career of global triumph and influence.  The album was ultimately awarded Best Jazz Vocal Performance at the inaugural Jazz Music Awards.  It is also a companion project to the award-winning Off-Broadway musical (also about Miriam Makeba) that Somi wrote and starred in called “Dreaming Zenzile”.  Both projects arrived on the heels of the unplanned release Holy Room - Live at Alte Oper with Frankfurt Radio Big Band that Somi decided to independently put out shortly after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The album ultimately earned her a 2021 Grammy® nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album.  With that nomination, Somi became the first African woman ever nominated in any of the Grammy® jazz categories.  The album also won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Vocal Album. Learn more at her website: https://www.somimusic.com.

#WJF2025 #SchomburgLive

General Admission $35 // Schomburg Society Member* $25 (Plus Eventbrite fees)

*Enter promotional code to reveal membership ticket . For more information, contact the Schomburg Society Office at [email protected] or 212.491.2252

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Accessibility requests can be made by e-mail [email protected].

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OPEN SEATING Ticketed guests will begin seating 30 minutes before start time.

GUESTS Please note that holding seats in the Langston Hughes Auditorium is strictly prohibited and there is no food or drinks allowed anywhere in the Schomburg Center.

E-TRANSPORTATION NYPL policy prohibits electric transportation devices (e.g., motorbikes, e-bikes, e-scooters, e-skateboards) from being brought into or stored at library sites for any length of time, as this is the best way to keep our spaces & people safe.

AUDIO/VIDEO RECORDING Programs are photographed and recorded by the Schomburg Center. Attending this event indicates your consent to being filmed/photographed and your consent to the use of your recorded image for any all purposes of the New York Public Library.

PRESS Please send all press inquiries (photo, video, interviews, audio-recording, etc) at least 24-hours before the day of the program to Leah Drayton at [email protected].

Please note that professional video recordings are prohibited without expressed consent.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, United States