You Need to Know: Michael Kiwanuka
Every Tuesday, You Need To Know spotlights a rising artist we're positive will blow up big. Listen now. Thank us later. This week: British singer-songwriter Michael Kiwanuka.
I made a lunchtime pilgrimage this June to one of Bonnaroo's more modest tent-stages to investigate an artist whose gentle debut Home Again hadn't ceased its repeat cycle since I pressed play weeks before. This Englishman's name was Michael Kiwanuka, and it was his first American gig with a full band. Quietly taking the stage just after noon, he sweated through the insistent Tennessee heat with a bright smile and a sharp pair of shades, altogether radiating the gracious presence of a legend-in-wait. Stripping Jimi Hendrix's "May This Be Love" of its theatrical bombast, it was hard to tell the 25-year-old Kiwanuka wasn't merely performing another of his own tender stories-in-song.
Souls don't come older than Michael Kiwanuka's. The North Londoner born to Ugandan parents is imbued with so much timelessness in his voice alone, it's a marvel his acoustically threaded music is able to maintain pace. Yet the vocal richness and fluid musicality marry smoothly in a place where soul is valued above all else—a soft space where giants like Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye went to spin their melodies. Kiwanuka's tie to this heritage of bleedingly passionate songwriting is impossibly genuine. Posturing simply isn't an option when the sincerity thrums at this frequency.
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