Working toward change
Rising star Lolo Zouaï shaking up music scene
If Lolo Zouaï had a chocolate shake in her hand, she would be experiencing a full-on flashback. In the late 2010s, Zouaï spent most of her time either shut up in her New York City apartment making music by herself or serving shakes.
“It was kind of like it is now,” Zouaï said from another New York apartment. “Me in my room, producing and recording my own songs except now I’m not making milkshakes on the side, which I don’t have to do now even though I do love to drink milkshakes.”
A few years ago, the singer-songwriter-producer didn’t have much interaction with the city outside her day job at a burger place. Then the French-born, San Francisco-raised Zouaï hooked up with designer KidSuper and his Brooklyn crew of musicians and artists.
“I wasn’t in the culture in New York, I wasn’t in the group I wanted to be in,” she said. “When I hooked up with everyone in Brooklyn, they inspired me, they taught me how to release music independently, they created a website for me and made my art work.”
Since then, Zouaï has been on the rise around the world, which seems like a natural fit for an artist with a French mother and Algerian father. Last year, her debut LP, “High Highs and Low Lows,” featured her singing in French and English, writing every track on a set that pushes and pulls between pop and electro, winks at hip-hop and North African styles.
“In the way that I sing, what naturally comes out might be from Arabic scales, with me just thinking it’s beautiful music and not thinking exactly where it comes from,” she said. “Also, having listened to a lot of classic French music growing up, there are classic melodies that I always come back to.”
Stuck at home like the rest of us, Zouaï has spent the last few weeks thinking beyond her four walls. In the middle of Pride last month, she released new EP “Beautiful Lies,” three songs happy to sit in moody, mid-tempo indie electropop. Zouaï donated all her June merch proceeds to the LGBTQ+ Freedom Fund and Black Lives Matter, and pledged to make similar donations every June for the rest of her career. Ahead of the EP release, she also devoted a chunk of income from the release to the Loveland Foundation, an initiative that seeks to offer free therapy sessions for black women.
“Thanks to social media, we can all see how Black people are treated in this country. … In France, there is a history of racism against Black people and Arab people,” she said. “Just last month, during Pride, I was sharing my support and some fans sent me hate messages just because of my support. I can forget not everyone has the mind set that I do.”
“But we see that changing as people all over the world get together,” Zouaï added.
Zouaï has no idea when her career will resume in full — she is slated to open for Dua Lipa on her European arena tour early next year. But she hopes the new normal that arrives in 2021 comes with a greater sense of social justice.