NAIMA BOCK

Some artists make music that sounds like it grew rather than was written. Naima Bock is one of them.

Born in Glastonbury to a Brazilian father and a Greek mother, raised partly in Brazil before settling in South-East London, Naima carries a remarkable inheritance in her songs. The Brazilian standards that played on family drives to the beach, the European folk traditions she discovered on her own terms, the rhythms of the earth she tends as a gardener — all of it finds its way in.

By fifteen she was already deep in the South-East London music scene, and went on to spend six years touring the world as bassist and vocalist with Goat Girl. When she left the band, she did what perhaps only Naima Bock would do: she started a gardening company, enrolled in an archaeology degree at UCL ("I liked being near the ground," she says), and quietly kept writing, teaching herself violin alongside guitar.

The result is music that feels genuinely rooted – in family, in landscape, in the long human tradition of passing songs from one generation to the next. Intimate, unhurried and quietly captivating, it's the perfect match for an evening at Goldfinch Books.