A Call for Reparations and Healing
When Kim Poole took the stage at the SheRhythms Festival launch in Accra, the night transformed from performance into collective remembrance and healing.
She began by delighting the audience with Baltimore Sugar, one of her signature classics, before offering a taste of unreleased music she is currently recording in Ghana—inviting the crowd to become her listening party. Then, in a moment that electrified the festival’s spirit, she led the audience in an impromptu sing-along of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song.
With phone lights glowing across the venue, Poole called the audience into solidarity:
“This is the African Union’s Year of Reparatory Justice, and for me to stand here on Ghanaian soil as part of SheRhythms is healing. Tonight, I ask you to sing for freedom, sing for the ancestors, sing for Reparations and Healing.”
As the only African-born outside of Africa invited to raise her voice at the official launch of SheRhythms Festival Ghana, Poole’s presence carried profound symbolic weight. She sang as an artist and as a representation of the historic Diaspora—bridging continents through song and memory.
Poole reflected. “My hope is that SheRhythms will welcome even more Black women artists from across the Diaspora when the full festival takes place in December.”
December 4th – 6th 2025 is when the SheRhythms Festival will take place. Poole notes that this leads into her Keynote address at the 9th Pan African Congress taking place next door to Ghana in neighbouring Lome, Togo December 8th – 12th 2025.
Her tribute changed the atmosphere and her voice embodied freedom and healing from many generations before her.
