Luna Li’s magical music makes a connection,
Luna Li’s magical music has connected Toronto during lockdown. The artist talks about her joy-sparking tunes with Sarah Liss
Given that Luna Li’s online bios bill her as “ur local moon fairy,” it only makes sense that she’s spent the past 11 months spreading magic. Where most people saw their spheres dramatically shrink as a result of COVID-induced isolation, the fast-rising Toronto artist has made it her mission to expand her world, transporting her legions of devoted followers (at last count: 40,600 on Instagram and 24,800 on TikTok) to a radically different plane. In this case, the portal to fairyland is music — specifically, instrumental clips that, in under a minute of soaring, skipping, cascading, layered song, manage to lift up your heart and make you feel something, even in the hard grey of a Toronto winter, even when you haven’t hugged anyone in months. Li makes you feel like beauty is within arm’s reach.
Last spring, Hannah Bussiere, the moon fairy behind Luna Li, started posting “jam videos,” as she call them: clips of her in her modestly appointed Toronto bedroom playing a host of different instruments, including a keyboard, a harp and her sparkly J. Mascis Jazzmaster electric guitar, which she handles with the deft wizardry of a rock god. Layer by layer, cut by cut, she composes orchestral pop reveries, the kind of music that levitates you to, say, a sun-dappled forest by way of Walt Disney or a trippy dance party with singing flowers.
Bussiere has been steadily growing her following since 2015, when she launched her Luna Li project; last January, she was highlighted as part of Exclaim!’s Class of 2020 concert series. But since she started sharing her jams, her audience has expanded exponentially. They vibe with the sense of safety and tranquility Bussiere creates through song. The videos are more than that, though: they put the nuts and bolts that go into making her transportive songs on display, offering a strikingly intimate glimpse of an artist creating magic in the moment. She has collected the tracks to create her “jams” EP, which comes out on February 5 and captures a neat snapshot of how Bussiere and her music have evolved since the videos began.
Prior to last year, Bussiere explains, collaboration was where she flourished—she practised each week with her live band and recorded her tracks in person with her drummer, Braden Sauder, who runs the studio Marquee Sound. But when the pandemic hit, Bussiere, like so many others, had to figure out entirely new ways to feed her creative spark. She and her band would all do yoga together every day on Zoom. If her artist friends were doing live streams, she made a point of showing up. “We’re connecting in other ways right now because we’re not able to create and perform and listen to live music together,” she says. She had to learn how to create in new ways, too, but exploration offered up new, different pleasures. “I love learning new things as I go,” she says. “And that feels inspiring — learning new production techniques or finding really cool sounds I didn’t know I could make. When I started doing the jam videos, it was a great exercise in production because I had to make them on my own, from start to finish.”
A classically trained multiinstrumentalist, Bussiere started piano lessons at age five and grew up immersed in music. (Her mom and her mom’s partner are codirectors of the Classical Music Conservatory on Roncesvalles.)
As a teenager, she gravitated toward Toronto’s then vibrant all-ages indie-rock scene. But even so, she says, as a person of mixed Asian heritage, “I never felt that creating music or starting my own band would be viable. It didn’t occur to me that I could do it because I didn’t see other people like me in the scene.” Bussiere explains that her network went global last May after she performed as part of Asia Rising, a livestreamed concert hosted by U.S. label/multiplatform media crew 88rising. “After that,” she says, “I was able to connect with people from Indonesia, all over Asia — that’s something I never would have imagined.”
Her first jam video appeared in the middle of March 2020, just as the government of Ontario declared a state of emergency; the ones that follow document the expansive world of beauty and wonder Bussiere has made, one musical interlude at a time. Expanding representation has always been crucial for her — she wants other kids who look like her to grow up knowing that starting a band is possible; she wants to be someone who opens up possibility for other girls and women, other Asian folks, other dreamers. But Bussiere is still struck by the proof of the effect she has already had on her fans. “It’s really cool to see that my work could inspire other people to create as well. It feels like a big creative community where the inspiration can go in a circle.”
We’re connecting in other ways right now because we’re not able to create and perform and listen to live music together.”