Interviewing Lorenza Marino: her new single "Italian & Zambian" and her multicultural sound

Today we're interviewing Lorenza Marino, a singer-songwriter and producer with Italian and Zambian roots who was raised in London. Her multicultural background plays a central role in both her identity and her music, and it served as the inspiration behind her latest single, Italian & Zambian, recorded at the Abbey Road Studios.

With a fresh artistic vision, a strong music background with her Popular Music Performance and Production degree, and a determination to celebrate every part of who she is, Lorenza is carving out a unique space for herself in the music industry.  Learning more about her journey, her influences, and the story behind her new release helps us better understand the essence of her music. Seeing how deeply connected she feels to her Mediterranean and African roots, and how naturally those influences find their way into her artistry, offers a powerful insight into both the artist and the person behind the music.

Her connection to her Mediterranean and African roots is evident not only in the song itself but also in its artwork: on the cover of Italian & Zambian, Lorenza wears an Italian football shirt paired with traditional Zambian attire, visually bringing together the two cultures that define her identity and her music. It is a powerful representation of the message at the heart of the single, one that celebrates heritage, belonging, and the beauty of embracing every part of who you are, even when you are raised far from your family's homeland.

Enjoy!

Your new song Italian & Zambian talks about your Italian and Zambian roots. What does it represent to you to bring both sides of your identity together in this track?

This song is bringing both of my roots and my cultures together, and it's important for me to share that in this song because I want my identity to be a big part of my music and for everyone to be on the same page and understand how much love I have for my cultures and how they are a big part of me in my daily life and also my music.

You recorded the song at the famous Abbey Road Studios. How did you get that opportunity, and what was it like hearing such a personal project come to life in such an iconic place?

So, Abbey Road was this incredible opportunity I had presented to me by my university, Southampton Solent University, and I was there for three years studying popular music performance and production, and in my final year, before graduation, I went to Abbey Road thanks to them and recorded Italian & Zambian. It was such an incredible experience to be in, as you said, an iconic place and to have a song that was created firstly from my own living room and my bedroom now in this massive studio with such incredible engineers who have worked with some of the greats that I look up to.

It was a massive shock, and I was just so thrilled and my parents especially, they were extremely, extremely happy and they were so happy for me, constantly calling me and telling me how proud they are. So, again, it feels very surreal that that happened and I'm truly grateful for the opportunity and that they selected Italian & Zambian for that song.

Do you think the mix of the Italian, Zambian and British cultures shapes the way you make music and even your music taste?

100%. I mean, since I was very young, my parents always played music in the house, very, very much. It was a lot of Italian music. It was a lot of American music. It was a lot of Zambian music or African music in general. It was a lot of music from the MENA region in all the different languages, in all these different genres.

The fact that I grew up in East London for most of my life, and there is just this pot of cultures melting together, and we are all there with so much pride, sharing our countries and the music and the languages that we love. So I'm very much inspired to fuse all of my inspirations together, and the people I met in my life 100% play a role in it.

And I was fortunate enough to move to Greece for six months, and again, I was so much inspired while I was there, and I think it will definitely reflect in the future releases and just in general, the future of my career.

If you had to describe your new single and your sound to someone who hasn’t heard your music before, how would you describe it?

So, if I had to describe the single or in general my music, for this single, I would say it's very much inspired by this African pop sound that's going on at the moment, and I would say a lot of it came from my recent visit a couple of years ago to Zambia. I was inspired by what I was seeing in the streets and hearing through the walls and everything that was going on, it was so inspiring. So I brought it back with me and I said, I'm gonna write something.

And I think that in overall, like my music is fusion music, it's fusing all of my inspirations and my culture and all the people I meet and the stories they tell me and the vibe that they give to me is everything. It just fuses together and it creates this world fusion or this world pot.

I don't always like to be boxed into a genre, but that's just how it is. That's just my music. It's just full of everything, all of the colors, and yeah, it's just very colorful and very vibrant, but it also has its moments of just, like "where is this girl taking us?", and you just have to follow along for the ride.

You mentioned being inspired by Bob Marley: One Love and the idea of returning to your roots. Did writing this song help you reconnect with Italy and Zambia in a deeper way?

I was watching Bob Marley: One Love just before the lyrics came to me. Bob Marley was such a spiritual person. He was very passionate about wanting to go back to the motherland, and watching that scene when it was happening, I was just like "I can relate, I want to go back to my motherlands too."

And it was just, you know, this moment, this light bulb moment that just clicked, and I was like, I'm making a voyage to be with my motherlands. Like, I want to go back. But there was also this thing of, like, where is my motherland? And the questions and the doubts of the past that have come in my life of, where do I belong and who do I belong with, that all came playing in very quickly, and I was like, actually, you know what, I'm going to write a song that clarifies all of that.

So Bob Marley, I connected with his music so much spiritually. And even myself, when I make music, there is a spiritual connection I have with music, and it always guides me. I was very much guided with this spirit when I was making Italian & Zambian.

And for the connection that it brought to me 100%, I mean, I was very fortunate that straight after going to Abbey Road, a couple of weeks later, I was performing this song at the Pitti Pizza & Friends in Salerno. It's a festival in my father's hometown, and I was so fortunate to be able to play there and to be playing that music in front of the place that I would spend all my summers in, it was quite an emotional moment for me, and I realized that while writing this song it became harder for me as a child of someone who hasn't grown up in the same country as their parents to constantly go for summer holidays to Italy or Zambia and then realise that the summer is ending and you can feel the summer is ending. And that's when you realise, oh no, I have to go back... like my summer is ending.

And it became harder as I got into my teenage years and it still is very hard right now, but it created this connection where there is hope for me. And I say that in the song that there is hope that one day I will return with my motherlands and I'm going to stay there. So yes, there was, there was this deep connection that was amazing. I felt it throughout the entirety of the making of this record.

As an artist with both Mediterranean and African roots, what do you hope people from different parts of the world take away from both your music and the cultures behind it? 

I have always been someone that has, I think, been very proud of my Mediterranean and African roots. It's definitely been a journey to be able to flaunt that around and it's something that I want to demonstrate in my music. It's something I want to demonstrate when I'm on stage and it's something I don't shy away from very much. I mean, it's in my name, it's in my looks, it's in my hair, it's in the way I dress, so there is no way of me hiding who I am and where I'm from. But I just hope that I can give pieces of my Mediterranean and African cultures to people when they listen to my music and take them away to these beautiful places that I call home. That's, that's all that I think about when I'm writing my music, while I was writing Italian and Zambian, I was thinking at home.

So... if this track can resonate with someone, almost help them imagine how Africa is and how the Mediterranean is, and specifically Zambia and Italy, I hope that's what my music can do to people, and I hope it resonates and I hope there is a connection there that brings people to want to discover more about the Mediterranean and Africa but on a so much deeper and personal level, not just what we're being thrown at on social media and what we're hearing and seeing all the time, but actually go further into discovering so much more about the beautiful history that goes beyond what we know about the Mediterranean and African music, people and everything that's involved in all of it. It's just an incredible, incredible thing.

Thank you for having me!

You can watch the video interview by clicking here, follow Lorenza by clicking here and listen to Italian & Zambian hereunder: