VIDEO: Student Vocalist Jason Sibi-Okumu

"My primary goal as a writer is to make people feel something, and to make people analyze their lives," he said. Music, for him, is a great tool "to give people relief, to give people joy—just to spread stories."

By
Kimberly Ashton
May 10, 2013
Like many first-semester students at Berklee, student vocalist Jason Sibi-Okumu was not only adapting to college life, but struggling with the culture shock that sometimes accompanies moving far from home.As a songwriting major, however, Sibi-Okumu naturally channeled his pain into his music, writing "Blue," a homesick melody about the bright skies he missed in his Kenyan homeland.
 
 
"My primary goal as a writer is to make people feel something, and to make people analyze their lives," he said. Music, for him, is a great tool "to give people relief, to give people joy—just to spread stories."
 
Now a fifth-semester student, Sibi-Okumu found his Berklee family through the Songwriting Club, the Berklee African Club and the Ubuntu Family Club, a group that gets together Saturday night to share meals. And this year, Sibi-Okumu's brother Jacob, a jazz guitarist, starts his own Berklee journey. 
 
"We play together and he does magical things with the guitar, so he takes me songs to whole different places," Sibi-Okumu said.