@alpaca.presents
by Brandon van der Berg @vdb.brandon
I met with Zena directly above the showroom to have a talk about her and her music.
Check her out on Instagram @zenaaaahmed or their Spotify
Read Below.
The last show of yours I went to, you started it by shouting “Willy! Bum! Poo!” into the microphone, do things like these happen often?
“Um… Well Yeah, well yeah, yeah. A lot. That specific incident was when I was on two hours of sleep, I just can’t seem to control myself on stage. Not in a weird way, but kind of in a weird way. The willy bum poo way.”
Do you prefer winter or summer?
“Summer”
Do you think the seasons impact your creativity?
“Actually yeah I write a lot more songs in winter, they’re always really sad. Winter when you’re all lonely and its cold and you want a cuddle from someone its when you end up writing all your angsty sad songs.”
When is your songwriting at its best?
“Actually just, if I haven’t written for a while and just find myself in a space on my own. Recently a lot of the time my songs have been written, it’s been when I’m waiting for someone. Like, if I’m at BIMM, which is the uni I go to, ill just book out one of the little rooms upstairs and f**k around for a while.”
You were in ‘Pylo’ @pyloband 3 years ago, you went solo and released “Chips by the Ocean” 2 years ago, what’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned about your music since then?
“I guess, with the band, it’s very collaborative, everyone’s involved in the writing process, and for that band, I only did vocals, so that was all I had to think about really, what lyrics I’m gonna write, what vocals I’m gonna write. When it’s with my own songs, I got to completely map out all of my stuff and think about all the other instruments as well, which definitely was more pressure but has advanced my songwriting so much.”
As someone who does write all the parts to their own music and has total creative control, when Do you feel like you need to take step back and let someone else take the reins?
"Yeah absolutely, I’m so lucky with the band I have because I feel like the respect and admiration we have for each other aids the creativity and ability to play. I love when we do covers because the band can write their own parts and I love that I have a band that can just pick things up, like that and write their own parts like that."
You played Milk Poetry’s Valley Fest stage last year, how was the experience?
"That was so lovely, that was a lovely opportunity. My bassist’s sister, who’s an incredibly talented playwright offered us an acoustic act at that festival. It was a little bit hectic getting everything there, we’re just uni students, most of us don’t drive and the ones that do, don’t have cars here. So it was a bit of a kerfuffle, Ollie had to drive his nan’s car down. So that was *chuckles* exciting.
But it was so much fun, so much fun. And it was really nice as well to be able to play a festival that big.
It was a real shame we couldn’t have the full band but Me, Handina @handinadutir0 and Ollie @ollie.armstrong worked really hard on those arrangements and it was really lovely to have that with them."
Did you find anything particularly challenging about it?
"Actually! I guess, censorship of my songs. I don’t know if my songs are too family-friendly and I was in a family tent, for the people who don’t know my songs, I have a song about Jeffrey Epstein and when I announced the song a child like, ran up to the stage haha. I was like oh dear, oh god, oh no."
So, to what extent do you worry about the audience’s reaction to part of your set?
"I don’t so much worry about you know, when I’m weird onstage. Sometimes I look back and think ya know “was that a bit weird?”, but I’m fine with it, it’s very much a part of my personality.
I do actually worry about the material of my songs, I wouldn’t want to trigger anybody for any reason or upset anyone. Every time I announce that I have a song about Jeffrey Epstein the crowd laughs, but I do actually sometimes really worry that there’s someone in the crowd that’s triggered by that.
But at the same time I wouldn’t let that change anything about my creative process with writing those songs, that song for instance come from a place of real anger about it and I wanted to capture that in a song."
Do you think anything has held you back since coming here?
"The mental limitations.
Exeter is not a very big city and I feel like I was very naïve for a little bit. When you come from a place. When not many people are making music in the same city as you and you go to a city like Bristol which is so creative and the university I go to is filled with incredible musicians, I was a bit intimidated. That kind of put me off writing but I’ve moved past that.
Now the limitation is money, I want more musicians and I want to gig in other cities and it’s just not a very high-earning industry at this level."
If you could describe your music using one main character from any movie, which would you pick and why?
"I pick Fregley from Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Just the same energy as me."
In terms of your performance, do you take any inspiration from other artists?
"Yeah actually, a lot of my inspiration was from artists I’ve seen here in Bristol, Eva Penney @penn3y_coin17 who’s supporting me tonight, Hannah Law @hannahlawmusic and The New Cut @new_cut_band. I always think these frontmen and women have been so ‘themselves’ on stage that I feel less weird when I say things like “Willy, bum, poo”.
There are definitely jazz artists when I was younger who I always thought were so smooth on stage or sexy or charismatic but I think that just intimidated me more, I don’t think I found my own identity through that, it’s the inspiration from people around me."
Between Exeter and Bristol, which environment for you personally is more creatively freeing?
"I don’t know if this comes with time with doing it, in Exeter when I was in college I had nothing to do so I would just work on my songs.
All of the production of my songs was just way more thought out back then because it was just all I would do. Whereas up here I think actually just the meaning behind my songs has changed so much.
I feel like lyric writing is something that’s really important to me and since coming to Bristol and, really more moving out of my family home, it makes you have to grow up so much, which I love and it's given me so much more material and a really different outlook on music. Music was just music, but the power it has as an outlet for me has developed so much.
I need music more now than I did then."
You’ve been playing under your ‘new’ solo act for around a year now, is there a reason you haven’t released yet?
*whispers* "Organisation."
"I’m literally awful that’s literally it. I think as well to go from not gigging at all to gigging quite a lot, it’s definitely draining. The space in my brain for that sort of stuff is much more limited.
I’m really happy with where it is now, I just want to know where it’s going."
Finally, which of your songs would you most like to release?
"It's called “Prissy Polly”. It’s inspired by my own experience in school, it’s written about a girl called Polly who’s a bully, and it kind of *laughs* describes little attributes of hers."
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