For a concept that appears so frequently throughout the Bible, the "Upper Room" has so many shifting meanings and contexts, that it is difficult to pin down what it really is. First mentioned in the Old Testament, it is thought of as having particular significance as a sacred site. A space for things holy. In the Book of Chronicles, David instructs his son Solomon to build the Temple of God.

"David gave Solomon his son the plan of the vestibule of the temple, and of its houses, its treasuries, its upper rooms, and its inner chambers, and of the room for the mercy seat; and the plan of all that he had in mind for the courts of the house of the Lord, all the surrounding chambers, the treasuries of the house of God, and the treasuries for dedicated gifts." (I Chron 28:11-12)

After the ascension of Jesus, the disciples return to Jerusalem and go to the upper room in which they staying, devoting themselves to praise and supplication. In the Book of Acts, the upper room is where Peter performs miracles. In the Book of Mark, the disciples are instructed to follow a man, who has prepared an upper room for them for Passover. This Upper Room (The Cenacle) is understood by Catholics to be the first Christian church: certain resurrection appearances of Jesus are placed here; this is where the preparation happened for his final Passover meal; this where Jesus washed the disciples feet; this where the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples on the day of the Pentecost.

It is this idea of the Upper Room as a space of sanctification, of a tender togetherness with God, that has carried into gospel music. In gospel great Mahalia Jackson’s version, the upper room is a place for intimacy through prayer. A place to sit and talk with God. A place for an otherworldly interaction with love. Jackson’s voice, her crackling vibrato, her lower register booming, taps into the fragility, the vulnerability, the courage that a surrender to love requires. But also, divinity of this space.

In the titular track of her latest album, the live offering Holy Room, singer-songwriter Somi also taps into this tension, this fear-fragility-fortification triangulation. First recorded in for her 2017 release, Petite Afrique, Holy Room is a disarming love song. Part gospel, a millennial spiritual, the song is complicated by Herve Samb’s guitar playing, Somi’s psalm in the chorus declaring the Takbir. Allahu akbar.

WATCH | Somi and the hr-Bigband perform Holy Room live

"So, there was a sense of Islamophobia in the political arena that was really disconcerting," says the award-winning artist.

"I was sort of thinking about love. I was thinking about how the best way to disarm people is with love. I know the term, Allah aukabar which means 'God is great' in Arabic, has become equated with terrorism. And in a way to speak those words becomes a political act. I thought, 'what better to invite people to understand the message or what those words actually mean than placed inside of a love song'. It’s really an invitation to consider humanity."

Filtered through the fear and uncertainty of 2020, Holy Room the album, becomes not just a request to consider the humanity of others, but also a moment to seek out the things that make us more than humane. An exploration of what makes us divine.

"It is also an opportunity to think about the sacredness of how we can rest in love in our most challenging moments," adds Somi.

"I think it’s still appropriate because, right now, what are these spaces that we hold sacred, that are keeping us sacred, that are getting us through? What are these holy places, be it a place, or a person, or a song? And so I feel like this becomes a call to ask people what is it that we hold most sacred that helps us get through. And also, in the larger conversation about Black lives and why we matter, it also becomes about cultural space and why that too is holy. And there’s just a lot of things that need to show up inside of this conversation around what rooms do we consider holy."

Recorded in May 2019 with German ensemble, the hr-Bigband, and arranged by bandleader John Beasley, the live performance consists predominantly of music from Petite Afrique and an earlier album, The Lagos Music Salon. Her major label debut, Somi recorded The Lagos Music Salon in 2014 after moving to Nigeria, supported by the gentle encouragement of her late mentor, Hugh Masekela. This was right at the peak of the popularity of New Africa Live, a series she initiated as a way of presenting a more modern and contemporary idea of "African music" in New York.

Say Somi:

“Ten years ago it was like, and this is no shade to any of them but it was always the elders like Bra Hugh, Youssou N’Dour, Angelique Kidjo, Salif Keita, and Baba Maal. You didn’t see the younger generation. We know ourselves. We know the music that’s happening on the continent and in our communities.”

New Africa Live hosted artists as diverse as K’naan, the BLK JKS, Asa, Keziah Jones and Kenyan rock band, Extra Golden.

"I believe that it was the beginning of asking institutions to start considering what African music is today. And then I had a personal loss, my father passed, and I needed to be distant from everything. At the time I felt like I was getting caught up in trying to lift up and take care of other artists and I wasn’t really taking care of myself. I just needed to focus on myself. So I moved to Lagos."

The opportunity presented itself in the form of a seven-week residency at Kwara State University in Illorin, in collaboration with the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. The teaching stint was laboured by protests at the university, but brought her to Nigeria.

In a 2014 interview with Latin Jazz Network, she describes the push to move.

“The loss was so sobering that I began to question my own life’s legacy and path. My dearest mentor Hugh Masekela knew about my personal loss and subsequent desire for change. He also knew that, more than ever, I wished I could move ‘home’ to Africa. Something about the idea seemed like it might be a way to get closer to my father’s spirit and my own heart. It was Uncle Hugh that reminded me that to be a musician is to be a global citizen and that I should always listen to my heart should it long to travel. ‘Stop thinking about it as a move,’ he said, ‘Think of it as an opportunity to spend time with another part of your global audience.’ That’s when I decided to make the bold choice of moving to Lagos. A true Africanist, I believe my father is proud of that choice.”

In order to test and develop her music, she started performing alongside other artists in art galleries and other non-traditional spaces, birthing The Lagos Music Salon. Moving back to New York 18 months later, she felt the scene had changed. That perhaps, there was less urgency behind an idea like New Africa Live.

"I feel the space is crowded, but it also at this point to me, it has started to lack a certain nuance. Now we have gotten into a monolith of African popular music, and contemporary African music. So now everything has to be Afro-beat. I’m missing the nuance. I’m missing the most interesting part of it. And this is no shade to Afro-beat. I love Afro-beat."

In search of more delicate textures, of sounds deeply entangled with their history and the untidy kinks of their politics, New Africa Live has grown into Salon Africana. A marriage of the salon performances of Lagos, and the curious and childlike naivete of New Africa Live.

"For me Salon Africana is about setting up the intimacy of ourselves. The nuance of ourselves. The artists who are leaning into heritage, leaning into craft, story-telling, art... It’s asking people to look closely. It’s about asking people to listen to the nuance of ourselves and not get it wrong again. Because I feel like we’ve gotten it wrong so many times… and when I say 'we' I feel like it’s ‘we’ the collective society. There’s always a misreading, a misplacing, a miscategorisation of African music, of African artists, and African storytelling."

Somi accepts award for Outstanding Jazz Album at the 49th NAACP Image Awards Non-Televised Awards Dinner at the Pasadena Conference Center on January 14, 2018 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Earl Gibson III/Getty Images)

In a quiet way, Somi's larger project is about stripping away the fluff and silencing the white noise. It's a move against a-historicity and towards the varied lineages that link us to a larger collective humanity. It is this concern that led her to the conception of Dreaming Zenzile, a musical based on the extraordinary life of South African legend, Miriam Makeba.

Were it not for the global lockdown, March 2020 would have seen this jazz play premiering at the Repertory Theatre of St Louis in March. For Somi, Dreaming Zenzile is about undoing the silence around Miriam Makeba in the States. With this play, she hope to re-insert Makeba's name and lagacy from all the places in which it was erased.

"I feel it’s in that kind of violent erasure of her standing in the United States when she married Stokley Carmichael. It has persisted. There’s a quiet that surrounds her. That still kind of accompanies her. And it’s not so much quiet as in delicate. It’s a very violent thing. When you look at who she was, what her career had been up until at that point, how much she had impacted popular culture in this country and with whom she kept company whether it was Stokley Carmichael, or Nina Simone, or Marlon Brando... you know the list is long.

"She sang at JFK’s birthday party, the one that Marilyn Monroe sang as well," adds Somi. "And it’s like, how is she not part of the way that we remember American culture in that time? She kind of returned to American consciousness in the 80’s with Paul Simon, but I just feel as though there’s so much that we just need to honour and celebrate. So for me it’s about remembering her legacy, remembering her contribution. Remembering and honouring what she’s inspired in myself as an African artist and not just as an African artist but what she means for culture at large."