Join us on Thursday, December 5 at 7pm (Doors: 6:30pm) for the joint launch of If I Gather Here and Shout by Funto Omojola and PALM WINE by YATTA. This evening will include an improvisational performance by both artists, followed by a conversation with writer and radio host Riel Bellow. 

In the words of Dawn Lundy Martin, “Omojola’s If I Gather Here and Shout is a fierce debut that worms its way right under the skin.” If I Gather Here and Shout summons Yoruba divinatory rituals into a hospital room. Incantatory verses accumulate alongside personal and historical “figures” of illness and death to illuminate the tensions between legibility and meaning-making that emerge when an ill Black body is processed through a Western medical context. With intimate knowledge of how ancestral memory aches and sings in the body, Funto Omojola invokes a lamenting chorus in the ceremony of survival. 

YATTA’s PALM WINE is the product of years of travel, reckoning, and solitude alchemized into a joyful return to home, God, and clarity of mind. The record follows YATTA’s critically-acclaimed poetry album, WAHALA. PALM WINE, the album’s title, is at once a play on the traditional West African drink, the musical genre of the same name, and the folk music project, Iron & Wine. Through their research, YATTA  learned that S.E. Rogie, a pioneer of the genre, was their granduncle. While PALM WINE is not a palm wine album in the conventional sense, it takes inspiration from the genre’s storytelling, lilting vocals, and slant towards levity, ease, and play. A departure from the poetic noise of YATTA’s previous releases, PALM WINE sustains an experimental spirit while delivering something new and expansive.

Image: it's an honor to be here, here i am an honor, Funto Omojola, 2024