Lola performs and makes music under the name Lola Vista.
Her diverse influences – from 70s, 80s and 90s R&B and soul, to jazz, hip hop, trap, UK grime and even classical music – can be heard in her sound, which she describes as “soulful and strong.” Her faves include Stevie Wonder, Sade, Luther Vandross, Erykah Badu, Mary J Blige and jazz greats like Sarah Vaughn.
Lola’s route to being a singer/songwriter is an unusual one. After graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in Social & Political Science, she worked in the music industry in the UK for a few years before moving to New York where she became a political writer and commentator using her incisive analysis about race, politics and the Black experience as a form of activism.
However, music has always been Lola’s first love – and Lola is a huge proponent of never giving up on your dreams. “I can’t remember a time when music was not a part of my life,” she says.
She started playing instruments at the age of 5 – and is a trained musician, who plays the piano and saxophone and writes and her own songs.
She honed her chops at church, studied music seriously throughout her life and in her teens was awarded a prestigious music scholarship at her secondary school.
“No matter what I’ve done, ultimately I always knew that I wanted to be an artist and that I express myself best lyrics and melodies,” she explains. “Music reaches parts of the soul that nothing else can reach, and when I need to work something out emotionally, the first thing I want to do is write a song about it. I hope my music does for people what good music has done for me.”
She aims to meld her passions for social and political change with her music and to work on a music project which explicitly does that. In addition, her desire is to make her music more of a multi-media experience, bringing her writing and journalistic practice, as well as other art forms into her creativity.