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I’ve said it before, but this year’s Mercury list really was genuinely brilliant, for the first time ever. And Kiwanuka a fantastic winner. What a record. Here’s @SarahMLee47’s portrait of him to celebrate
I interviewed Kiwanuka a few years back for Q. This was a the time of Black Man in a White World. I wish I could reprint it here, not for my own vanity, but because I& #39;d love people to read what he said about his experience of being a black musician in a painfully white industry.
But similarly he said he didn& #39;t actually fit in the places people expected him to either — Studying jazz at RCoM, for instance, and raised C of E meant he didn& #39;t know how to join in with other black session musicians he knew at Pentecostal church services.
Anyway I just dug out the piece, and found this paragraph:
What he found is that he didn’t quite fit in anywhere: the world of the barber shop or the music college or the session musician. “Which I’m quite into now … I’ve had a chance to make my own little spot, to be my own little artist. I’ve felt like I can finally be my own self.”
I really hope he& #39;s feeling like his own self today.
