We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Laura Lizcano a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Laura, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Taking a risk on your artistic practice.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Hi! My name is Laura and I’m a Colombian singer-songwriter based in New York.

I’ve wanted to be a singer for as long as I can remember and art has always been an integral part of my life. I formally started my career as an artist in 2018, when I released my first independently produced project, an EP titled Chance on Me, which featured six of my original songs. This project gave me my first introduction into what it was like to be an indie artist and I have to say that I was hooked. I couldn’t wait to make more records after that.

In 2020, I released my second project, titled Heart. This was a full-length album that helped me establish more of my artistic vision. When I recorded my first project, I had just graduated with a performance degree in jazz voice, and I was still convinced that I wanted to be a jazz vocalist. But after I wrote more songs and started finding my own unique voice, I realized more and more that being a jazz artist was not fully aligned with how I saw myself creatively. So, when we recorded Heart, I was very intentional about presenting a set of songs that, although still jazz-influenced, felt more like a folk, singer-songwriter record. The theme of the record deals with what it means to be a song-writer, wearing your heart on your sleeve, and being extremely vulnerable through song. The album cover features a raw cow’s heart, which we thought illustrated the theme perfectly.

So, after I released Heart, we were deep, deep in the lockdown of the pandemic. Of course, all of my work and public presentations had halted and I had all this time to just write and be creative. I took clown classes over zoom, I did a lot of collages, and I wrote a bunch of songs. This intense creative period eventually led to my latest project, Daughter of the Sea, which was released in the fall of 2022. This album is an even further departure from my training as a jazz vocalist, as it features string quartet arrangements on four of the tracks, as well as string interludes composed by Erin Busch. My partner calls this record my Srgt. Pepper album because it truly is an eclectic mix of things. The centerpiece song, Daughter of the Sea, is a song about being an immigrant daughter – of having to confront my identity as being of two places at the same time and navigating what that means in two different cultures. This record was so liberating for me, because it helped me to see that I belong to this world as my own unique self, rather than a fractured individual, pulled between two countries and two cultures.

Though my work is highly personal, I strive for it to resonate with folks on a deeply emotional level. By being vulnerable in my lyrics and my music, I hope that others feel the permission to be vulnerable themselves and to feel connected to themselves.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

This question is so deep for me because I am immigrant who arrived in the U.S. when I was only ten years old. I grew up in a very rural place in the middle of Pennsylvania, where I was disconnected from my family and my home culture. I think that, against all odds, I managed to have my own world view as a teenager in a place where there was such a strong, cultural perspective.

My 15, 16, & 17-year old self was so wise. She understood that there was a much bigger world outside this specific community and that it was ok to desire a life beyond it. Her hunger and drive are what have fueled me and my artistic practice. I have so much respect for her because she was never afraid to question her teachers or peers. She was to go to college and build herself a creative life. That’s almost unbelievable considering the circumstances.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

The best thing we can do for artists is provide unrestricted income, affordable housing, and access to healthcare. I think there’s sometimes this idea that folks have to suffer for their art or that artists need to be broke or that artistic work is somehow not the same as other types of work. I’m a firm believer that when folks have their human needs met, they are able to create amazing, beautiful things. I would love to live in a world where artists are able to create because they have the time, bandwidth and space to pursue their artistic goals, rather than create in-spite of the challenges of being in survival mode. I really would love to see more universal basic income programs for artists.

Contact Info:

• Website: lauralizcanomusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lauralizcanomusic

Image Credits
Maya Dixon