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Michael Kiwanuka On Embracing His Name And How 'Big Little Lies' Changed His Life

Michael Kiwanuka went to music school, but he thinks technical knowledge is less important than passion and free expression.
Olivia Rose
/
Courtesy of the artist
Michael Kiwanuka went to music school, but he thinks technical knowledge is less important than passion and free expression.

You might know that song, called "Cold Little Heart" as the opening credits to the HBO show Big Little Lies, starring Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon. It was a pretty big deal, but the person who wrote that song, Michael Kiwanuka, didn't even remember signing off on it at the time the show premiered.

"What's Big Little Lies? I had completely forgotten about this thing," he says about that time. "And then my friend a few weeks after that was like, 'You know, [your song]: it's the opening credits of that show.' And I was like, oh, wow!"

The popularity of that show catapulted Michael Kiwanuka to into the spotlight here in the U.S. It also added to his fame at home in the U.K., where he had won the BBC Sound of 2012 poll before even releasing his first album and later saw his second album, 2016's Love & Hate, debut at No. 1 on the charts.

Still, as the son of Ugandan parents, he struggled with feeling like an outsider. Now, he's back with his third album, simply titled Kiwanuka. "It's something to be proud of — to have my name, Kiwanuka, as an immigrant and as an African," he says.

Michael Kiwanuka talks about embracing that name, finding his voice and how that TV show changed his life. Before we get to that conversation, we start with a live performance of "You Ain't the Problem" from his latest album. Hear it all in the player above.

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Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).

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