Florilegium

You’ve heard Uwade before. It’s her honeyed voice that opens Fleet Foxes’ 2020 record Shore – an experience that’s since earned her global critical acclaim. Though her career in music is now taking off, for Uwade, 22, singing has always been a kind of prayer. Florilegium, the debut album from songwriter Uwade, winds through genre, through death, break-ups, friendship, and failure. Here, she wanted to honour as much of herself as she could – her family and Nigerian heritage, her scholarly tendencies, her background in choirs, the literature that moves her, the melodies of artists like Fela Kuti, Yebba, and Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, who inspired her to start writing songs at the inception of her music-making. Cerebral and curious, each musical moment feels tactile, deliberate, and thoughtful – but also fresh, like something just discovered. A shimmering anthology that finds sweetness and light in sorrow, an amalgamation of disparate influences and recording sessions seamlessly fitting together through her expressive, expansive voice. The word Florilegium has meant different things to different people at different times. Borrowed from the Latin adjective florilegus, meaning “flower-gathering,” it has been used to designate books of botanical illustrations, collections of literary extracts, and anthologies. The first (and only) attestation of the root word comes from Latin poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses where he describes the flower-gathering bees that are born from the buried bodies of sacrificial bulls. Life from death. Growth from decay. The album Florilegium is a celebration of multiplicity. From the multiple meanings of the word to all of the multitudes we contain and are afraid to acknowledge. She’s toured with Fleet Foxes, Kevin Morby, Andrew Bird, Sylvan Esso, The Strokes, Local Natives, Whitney, and Jamila Woods.