Ali Mohamed Hirmoge

Ali Mohamed Hirmoge was born and raised in Somalia. He now lives in London, where the weather is quieter and the nights are longer — the right conditions, he says, for finishing a verse.

He writes his own lyrics and his own melodies, and he writes books. The two are not separate practices for him: a chapter often begins as a line he could not fit into a song, and a song often begins as a paragraph he could not stop humming.

Salt & Song is his memoir of the crossing — from a harbour in Mogadishu to a kitchen table in London — and the midnight recordings are the songs it grew into.