Michael Kiwanuka will take to the main stage at Glastonbury this afternoon (June 29) for an hour-long set on the Pyramid Stage. The North London-born singer has released three studio albums to huge acclaim and has been awarded the Mercury Prize for his songwriting on his third album, KIWANUKA.
Kiwanuka was born in Muswell Hill in 1987 and attended Fortismere extensively in the area. He immediately developed a love of music but as a child was more interested in rock, citing Nirvana and Radiohead as major influences.
But as he got older he became more interested in other styles of music and gained a place at the prestigious Royal Academy of Music to study jazz. Speaking to the Guardian in 2020, Kiwanuka said he quit after disappointing financial results, saying he was plagued by self-doubt and tended to quit when the going got tough.
He then became a bit of a guitarist and would perform his own songs in pubs just as a side job. But in 2011, everything changed for the young man.
Kiwanuka signed with Polydor, a record label, and released his debut album Home Again. But the pressure was intense, especially after Kiwanuka was invited to work with Kanye West on his Yeezus project, which he told the Guardian left him feeling “intimidated” and “inadequate”.
But his third album, KIWANUKA, is about challenging that inadequacy, starting with the name of the album itself. The Guardian reports that at the school in Muswell Hill, an overwhelmingly white area of north London, Kiwanuka would dread new teachers reading the register for the first time because he would always have to correct them on how to pronounce his surname. The album’s name is a tribute to who he is, and a belated protest at one time being asked if he wanted to change his stage name to be more palatable to audiences.
But now Kiwanuka is preparing to play one of the biggest gigs of his career. The Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury is something many artists can only dream of, and this North London boy has now entered the Hall of Fame.
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