Michael Kiwanuka is a 23 year old North Londoner with a voice you'd expect to hear on vinyl - a rich, achingly soulful voice that sounds as though it came straight out of the 1960s.

He's been supporting nu-soul diva Adele on her European tour, accompanied by his trusty acoustic six-string, and though he's thrilled to be playing his folk-inflected songs to these large, welcoming audiences, the young songwriter has had to overcome certain hurdles.

Growing up in London as the son of Ugandan immigrants meant Kiwanuka spent some time trying to establish a cultural identity. North London may be famed for its grime contingency, but Kiwanuka grew up in Muswell Hill, an affluent area far removed from grime's gritty pavements. “It's a very white, middle class neighborhood, so the artists I grew up listening to were all white guitarists. My friend's parents listened to bands like the Rolling Stones and The Beatles, so it wasn't until I came across Hendrix that I realized black dudes could play guitar too”.

Whilst the predominant mainstream guitar music of the West - indie, rock, metal - may have come to be viewed as the preserve of floppy-haired white men, all of these genres owe a great debt to the blues - music of black origin. “Its odd, because most people know all about the blues and how black culture had such a large part in laying the foundations, but I just wasn't exposed to that as a teenager, I didn't know anything about that side of it. I got really interested in it as I got older though.”

Kiwanuka headed to Hackney at 16, with the hopes of becoming a session guitarist. He hooked up with Tinie Tempah collaborator Labrinth for contemporary R&B, soul and jazz-funk jams, and even turned out some sessions for grime teenybopper Chipmunk along the way, but session work proved frustrating for the burgeoning artist. “I only ever got offered the urban gigs, so the session stuff didn't really work out. It was more about me learning to become a musician.” He remembers one particularly occasion where a man on a bus asked him, baffled, what he was doing with a guitar case. “People often assume it's a bass guitar, and that I play reggae with it. It took me awhile to get used to that, to feeling different”.

Kiwanuka's story speaks for a lot of people in London; it's a city where traditional ideas of culture, race and identity have blurred. Despite his patriotism, he felt too African to be seen as truly British but found he was treated like a tourist when he visited Uganda with his parents.

Though the session work left him feeling unfulfilled artistically, it was meeting other musicians and creating together that helped him overcome the need for permission that had initially held him back. “I really liked being able to get together with a group of people with different backgrounds and stories and make something together. When you do that, none of the labels that we give ourselves matter; it's the music that matters.” That's not to say he's totally at ease: “Funnily enough, that worry still creeps in sometimes.”

He's wary of sounding “too folk” because he worries that he “doesn't fit in” with the folk scene. At the beginning of his songwriting tenure, he also fretted that his songs might sound “too African”, as he admits with gentle chagrin. “I worried about my name too. I thought about changing it to something easier - I didn't want people to think I was a world music artist.” Thankfully, his friends encouraged him to keep his name, and he found himself learning to celebrate his individuality. “I've also learned that people and audiences can be really open to it now, that mixing-up of music and culture. It makes things interesting. It allows someone to have an individual flavour and style.”

You'd be hard pressed to hear it in his music, but as a teen, Kiwanuka was enthralled with the iconic grunge thrashings of Nirvana. “They were huge in my school. Between year seven and year nine I listened to almost nothing else.” Even Kurt, with his blonde hair and blues eyes, namechecked Leadbelly, so he was also another of those white rockers inspired by black guys with six strings. “I have so much respect for them as songwriters. Their music had soul to it, even if it wasn't 'soul music'. I believed it,” he says with emphasis, “and was drawn to it. I was really inspired by their From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishka album”.

Along with their MTV Unplugged LP, Muddy Banks was a live Nirvana album. The power of live recordings is a recurring theme for Kiwanuka; it was a live outtake of Otis Redding's hit 'Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay' that propelled the young soul singer to find his own voice. “My family didn't really have computers till much later on, so I didn't make beats the way a lot of kids do in their teens. I was into more interested in instruments that you could hold in your hand. I really relished live recordings, and I wondered what it would sound like to make a record. I loved live recordings because you got to hear all the banter and natural acoustics; there's an atmosphere with live recordings that isn't always there on studio albums. I loved that. I still do.”

He got to find out what making a record was like when Paul Butler of The Bees caught wind of the solo material Kiwanuka was moonlighting at low key London gigs between his session work. Butler invited Kiwanuka up to the Isle Of Wight (“It's a lovely place to record; very quiet and relaxed”) to lay down the songs which would become his upcoming Tell Me A Tale EP, a three track work of soaring vocals and sublime arrangements, recordings that merge the rootsy folk-soul he favours with the jazzier sounds he's played during his jams with Labrinth. It's a stunning effort, recalling Terry Callier, and Curtis Mayfield, and an thrilling introduction to the upcoming full length album.

Though he's living in Camden now, most of the material on Home Again, which is set for a 2012 release, was written back in Muswell Hill. “I wasn't in a relationship at the time, but there are a couple of love songs on there. I tend to write about thing that are burdening me, or things I feel good about. I called it Home Again because I wanted it to capture that mood you get when you're feeling yourself, and at ease; that feeling you get when your worry-free.” Soul music has long given voice to heartache and cracked joy, and there's an unmistakable sense of yearning in Kiwanuka's melodies, but there's little melancholy on Home Again, he says. “It's a hopeful album. I want it to make people feel warm and good”.

Michael Kiwanuka live dates:

4 June @ Bushstock, London
7 June @ The Social, London