by Welcome back to Northwest Music Month 2016, where we’re spending each day in June turning you onto a new local artist that needs to be on your radar, one artist at a time. Today we’ve got a special one for you. Fans of northwest-grown folk singer-songwriters, you have to know about Naomi Wachira; you won’t be quite the same person afterwards.
Once declared “Best Folk Singer in Seattle,” Naomi Wachira is a local musician with quite the pedigree. Wachira has been writing and recording music under her own name for a handful of years, and her discography includes two EPs and a self-titled full length debut, released early in 2014 to unanimous critical praise. She’s also a renowned live performer, performing at such prestigious local events as Bumbershoot 2014 and the 2014 outing of the Madaraka Festival.
A Seattle-via-Kenya native, Wachira’s approach to folk music is doubly soulful and accessible in nature. With a slight world music edge to her arrangements and performances, Wachira’s songs take pretty clear influence from bluesy folk singer-songwriters like Tracy Chapman, and in the live setting, her performances are beautifully intimate and impassioned. It’s easy to lose yourself in what Naomi brings to the table; there’s no one else around here doing what she’s doing quite how she does it.
If you’ve gone this long without hearing Naomi Wachira’s music, stop everything you’re doing, put one of her releases on, close your eyes, and find yourself completely enamored with the resulting feelings.
You can follow Naomi Wachira on Facebook and Twitter, and sample her music below. Naomi also has a PledgeMusic campaign currently running to fund her sophomore full-length album, Song of Lament. To pledge to her campaign, whose different pledge options include getting the album on CD when it’s completed, Ankara-themed coasters, and a signed guitar and a signed copy of Song of Lament when it’s released, consult http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/naomiwachira.
