What is home?
Where is home?
What or where is home when you’re born in one place but, still a child, move to another place? What or where is home when the house where you grew up burns to the ground? What or where is home when your life is world travel, constantly moving from London to Hiroshima to Lisbon to Addis Ababa to Berkeley and beyond?
Eki’Shola explores these questions—deeply personal yet universal—on her upcoming album 還 (Kaeru). A Japanese verb meaning “to return home,” the album title reflects that exploration, and it is in Japan where the artist (primarily a singer and keyboardist) has felt most connected to the idea of home. On this, her fifth full-length album, Eki’Shola collaborates with Hidenori Tsugita (drums), Tatsuya Okabayashi (morin khuur), and Uma Ebina (shamisen and shakuhachi), blending neo-soul jazz fusion jams with the sound of traditional Japanese and Mongolian instruments to meditate on these questions of place, movement, and belonging. The music is wild and free, yet, despite the contradiction, somehow stays rooted.
