JASON SIBI-OKUMU

Nairobi-born and Berklee-trained, Jason Sibi-Okumu has been using music to heal for most of his life.

He picked up guitar at thirteen and started writing in earnest at fifteen, after a chronic kidney failure diagnosis gave him something he needed to put into words.

Two years of dialysis and a 2007 transplant later, the practice stuck, less a career move than a steadying one.

A partial scholarship through Berklee's African Scholars Program brought him from Nairobi to Boston in 2010, where he earned a professional diploma in Songwriting alongside his brother Jacob, a guitarist who has shadowed his songs since the beginning.

What he writes now is generous and unhurried, the sound of someone who has already made peace with something and is offering you the calm rather than the story.

"Honey" is his first release for Mixtape Meditation Records and the opening move in a three-album commitment.