«Music has saved my life»

The Catalan artist Lia Kali, a native of Barcelona, ​​is difficult to classify. With a style that has its roots in the music of the great African-American divas who have come into his life through his passion for the tragic Amy Winehouse, their music draws on all kinds of influences to form an eclectic whole with touches of rap, reggae, jazz or urban music as a whole. Tonight, this emerging singer, unknown to many, goes to The Anthillat the same time that he releases his new song, What do I owe you.

At 14 years old, this Barcelona native spent a few days in the Teen Crisis Unit of Sant Boi de Llobregat. An experience that marked his life and that gives the title to one of his songs, UCA, corresponding to the initials of that service. The singer acknowledged that, even after so much time, she still finds it difficult to talk about that vital moment, which she had to experience by mistake in the face of a host of circumstances. It all started as a result of “a fight” that they had had at home and that led to their admission. in a psychiatric center“a place with bars, cameras, it looked like a prison.”

«The psychiatrist was on vacation and I They were medicating me without a diagnosis and about to tie myself to the bed,” he acknowledged in several interviews, “it was very difficult for me to write the song; telling how they drugged me and mistreated me. But, in addition to being a therapy to heal that difficult experience, the song also served to denounce the situation and, incidentally, issue a harsh rebuke for this type of management of certain youth behaviors: “It is clear that here, as it is “Mental health is by keeping quiet, sleeping, mistreating and torturing those kids who all they need is a hug.”

With that “fat wafer” that she took from discovering that this type of centers existed in the world, and closer than she thought, Lia Kali decided to start her first studio album, Against all odds, which represents a journey from that initial darkness, which marked his adolescence, towards the light, achieved through his songs. “For me, music has saved my life,” admits Lia Kali, who assures that when she writes she does it “always out of personal need.”

The Barcelonan’s passion for music came from the hand of one of the most recent tragic artists, Amy Winehouse. With some friends, Lia Kali started making covers and from there emerged a tribute band to the London singer with whom she discovered the therapeutic power of songs to express and heal pain. “It was wonderful to realize that with music I could free myself from all that and that people liked it,” she says.

In those first steps, when she still did not know where she wanted to direct her career, the Catalan decided to take a step further, and appeared on the Telecinco program The voiceperforming with a lot of personality live a particular version of the Roxanne from The Police that perplexed the four members of the jury. But there, however, she realized that this was not the path she wanted to follow. “It included having to sign with a multinational whose contract had very abusive fine print,” she told Sound World“I realized that, even if it was harder and slower, it was better to own my music and my career.”

That was in 2019. And just a year later, it would be the world itself that would make her stop, reflect and find her way. The coronavirus pandemic and its confinements and restrictions posed a significant new challenge for Lia. Her exit, as always, came hand in hand with music. Those difficult months gave him the definitive impetus to launch into write and compose your own songsusing their own experiences and taking the opportunity to self-discover and heal their wounds.

In it neosoul coming from the style of Amy Winehouse in which she had started, she laid the first stones of a artistic sensitivity that would soon be nourished by all kinds of styles. Urban music, jazz, soul, reggae, flamenco and rap, with a special base of music of African-American origin, through all the great divas of black music from decades ago.

And with the basis of that eclecticism, he released his first singles in the years 2022 and 2023, which dazzled the public and would end up being the necessary ingredients to put together his first and only album so far, Against all oddslaunched at the end of 2023.

Social networks had been the springboard for his career, which soon began to emerge and become something tangible, with collaborations with artists as prominent as Rels B, Fernando Costa or SFDK and performances at festivals, such as Viña Rock, or in countries such as Colombia, Mexico or the United States.

This very night, practically at the same time that he will be in The Anthill with Pablo Motoslaunches precisely a new song, What do I owe you, in which, almost certainly, she will once again do what she is so good at: transforming all the negative emotions that often flood her into music. “I am very nourished by everything I have experienced, logically, and I draw a lot from it and I believe that pain, rage, revenge are an incredible driving force,” he acknowledges.