Jamila Woods
@ the Love Supreme Jazz Festival
4 July 2025

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Biography

Occasionally I bump into someone who appears to have been born on a stage! “Jamila has a natural confidence that is quite shocking at first. But once I got over it I just kept the camera pointed in her direction and the great shots just kept coming. Jamila is someone I will be keeping a beady eye (or long lens) focused on!”
Robin Francis C/o Michael Valentine Studio

Jamila Woods is a poet, musician, and teaching artist born and raised on the South Side of Chicago. In 2016, Jamila released her critically acclaimed debut album, “Heaven”. Her second studio album, “Legacy Legacy!” was released in 2019. “LEGACY!” pays homage to a collection of artists of colour who have influenced her life and work.

Jamila’s third solo album, “Water Made Us” is an introspective song cycle about love and relationships was released October 13, 2023 via JagJaguwar Records. Jamila has been featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk, CBS This Morning, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She has shared stages with Corinne Bailey Rae, Rafael Saadiq, Bonobo, Common, Chance the Rapper, Brittany Howard, Macklemore, and many others. An award-winning poet, Jamila’s work often blurs boundaries between poem and song. As cultural critic Doreen St. Felix writes in her review of HEAVN, “It makes you wish all singers were poets.”