Michael Kiwanuka & Brittany Howard

Michael Kiwanuka

With his acoustic sound and timelessly soulful voice, British singer/songwriter Michael Kiwanuka emerged to acclaim in 2011 combining folk, indie rock, and R&B with traditions borrowed from his Ugandan heritage. Drawing favorable comparisons to Curtis Mayfield, Terry Callier, and Van Morrison, Kiwanuka earned a Mercury Prize nomination for his debut album, 2012’s Home Again, and won the BBC’s Sound of 2012. He further cemented his reputation as a gifted and rootsy performer with his sophomore album, 2016’s Love & Hate, which went gold, landing at number one in the U.K. In 2019, he released the full-length Kiwanuka. Co-produced by Danger Mouse and Inflo, it took home 2020’s Mercury Prize.

Kiwanuka was born in Muswell Hill, London in 1987, to Ugandan parents who had fled Idi Amin’s regime in the ’70s. He initially developed a love of rock music — in particular, Radiohead and Nirvana — and he performed in various cover bands while briefly studying jazz at the Royal Academy of Music and pop music at Westminster University. An outtake of Otis Redding‘s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” inspired him to take a more stripped-back approach. After performing as a session musician for former Bill Withers drummer James Gadson and Tinie Tempah producer Labrinth, he played on the capitol’s live circuit, where he was discovered by the Bees‘ Paul Butler, who invited him to record material at his Isle of Wight studio. After signing to Mumford & Sons‘ Communion label in 2011, he released two EPs, Tell Me a Tale and I’m Getting Ready, before supporting Adele on her U.K. tour.

In 2012, he finished third behind Emeli Sandé and Maverick Sabre on the Brits Critics Choice short list. He also followed in the footsteps of Jessie J, Florence + the Machine, and Ellie Goulding winning the prestigious BBC Sound of 2012 poll. Shortly thereafter, he released his debut single and album, both titled Home Again. A critical and commercial success, the set peaked at number four in the U.K. and reached number 23 on the U.S. folk chart. It also earned a Mercury Prize nomination.

After an extensive tour, Kiwanuka returned to the studio in 2015. Produced in part by Danger Mouse, his more experimental sophomore album, Love & Hate, was released by Polydor in the summer of 2016. Also well-received, it garnered Kiwanuka his first number one album in Britain. In 2019, he issued the single “Money” with Tom Misch, followed by three advance tracks (“Hero,” “You Ain’t the Problem,” and “Piano Joint”) for the October issue of the full-length Kiwanuka. Co-produced by Danger Mouse and Inflo, the album spent five weeks at the top of the British charts and spent months there overall. Kiwanuka was awarded the prestigious Mercury Prize in 2020. ~ Jon O’Brien, Rovi

Yasmin Williams

Yasmin Williams sits on her leather couch, her guitar stretched across her lap horizontally with its strings turned to the sky. She taps on the fretboard with her left hand as her right hand plucks a kalimba placed on the guitar’s body. Her feet, clad in tap shoes, keep rhythm on a mic’d wooden board placed under her. Even with all limbs in play, it’s mind boggling that the melodic and percussive sounds that emerge are made by just one musician, playing in real time. With her ambidextrous and pedidextrous, multi-instrumental techniques of her own making and influences ranging from video games to West African griots subverting the predominantly white male canon of fingerstyle guitar, Yasmin Williams is truly a guitarist for the new century. So too is her stunning sophomore release, Urban Driftwood, an album for and of these times. Though the record is instrumental, its songs follow a narrative arc of 2020, illustrating both a personal journey and a national reckoning, through Williams’ evocative, lyrical compositions.

A native of northern Virginia, Williams, now 24, began playing electric guitar in 8th grade, after she beat the video game Guitar Hero 2 on expert level. Initially inspired by Jimi Hendrix and other shredders she was familiar with through the game, she quickly moved on to acoustic guitar, finding that it allowed her to combine fingerstyle techniques with the lap-tapping she had developed through Guitar Hero, as well as perform as a solo artist. By 10th grade, she had released an EP of songs of her own composition. Deriving no lineage from “American primitive” and rejecting the problematic connotations of the term, Williams’ influences include the smooth jazz and R&B she listened to growing up, Hendrix and Nirvana, go-go and hip-hop. Her love for the band Earth, Wind and Fire prompted her to incorporate the kalimba into her songwriting, and more recently, she’s drawn inspiration from other Black women guitarists such as Elizabeth Cotten, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Algia Mae Hinton. On Urban Driftwood, Williams references the music of West African griots through the inclusion of kora (which she recently learned) and by featuring the hand drumming of 150th generation djeli of the Kouyate family, Amadou Kouyate, on the title track.

Since its release in January 2021, Urban Driftwood has been praised by numerous publications such as Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Wasington Post, NPR Music, No Depression, Paste Magazine, and many others. Williams will be touring in support of Urban Driftwood throughout 2021.