Lizard Lounge Poetry Jam-kwe

$10

A native son of West Africa, born of a Ghanaian mother and a Cameroonian father, poet, multi-instrumentalist, composer, podcast host, educator, producer, and entrepreneur, kwe started the Music Is Healing Us (MIHU) collective in 2014 as a bridge between music, community education, and wellness. The collective hosted the Unity through Music celebration at Shastice Park in Mount Shasta, CA, and the Cambridge Center for the Arts in Cambridge, MA. kwe has had the opportunity to share the stage with some of his favorite artists, including Habib Koite, Mad Professor, and KRS-ONE, as well as several other singers and instrumentalists from the MIHU collective. kwe is an alumnus of the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his PhD in Education, and the University of Chicago, where he studied Humanities and Philosophy of Religion. He has taught Humanities, Philosophy, Music and Art+Design at Harold Washington College (one of the City Colleges of Chicago) and Northeastern University.

He has released several albums, including “Astronomy” (2019) and “Bright Side” (2021), both released on his Music Is Healing imprint. The messages carried forth by the hypnotic, meditative, and trance-inducing riddims rest on themes of brotherhood, devotion, and praise, with songs like “His Name” mixed by Scientist and featuring Junior Toots (son of legendary Toots Hiɓbert from Toots and the Maytals). kwe performed the opening libation at the 2024 Boston Juneteenth celebration in Roxbury, MA, and also performed his self-published “Dirges of Becoming” at the Lizard Lounge Poetry Jam in Cambridge, MA, with the Jeff Robinson Trio.

He received an Aspen Writers Foundation Bedell scholarship for Summer Words Festival where he performed at the Belly Up.

kwe is also a radio host at WBCA 102.9FM Boston’s community radio station, where he hosts the Music Is Healing Boston radio show, and a former host on KALX at Berkeley and WMBR at MIT. He is working on a new full-length recording project featuring collaborations with some of the best musicians in the Greater Boston and Washington, D.C., areas, where he partially grew up.

Lizard Lounge Poetry Jam