During this year’s edition of the Reeperbahn Festival we had the opportunity to talk to up-and-coming Welsh artist Hana Lili.
Hana describes her sound as rock and grungy. More often than not she finds that this also describes the music she personally listens to. “The music that I’m drawn to make is born more and more out of me being myself so the more myself I am the more I find that I’m drawn to wanting to rock out and be myself and not try and be so perfect all the time”. It’s very freeing to her as a woman, also emotionally, to be able to express herself and not having to fit in a certain mould all the time.
Hana played three sets at the Reeperbahn Festival! For the first two, she wasn’t sure how the audience was going to be, but at the end it was lots of fun. Hana said she loves playing over here in Germany and that it was great interacting with the crowd! It’s “such an honour to play at such a cool festival”, she then said.
Her favourite shows she played this year so far were when she supported the band LEAP in April and May for more than 20 shows. She loved seeing the different cultures and cities here in Europe and recalled Wales, where she’s from, being unique and beautiful too! Nice about these shows were also generally speaking the crowds and the female only mosh pits during her set. If she had to name a dream venue to play at, it would be Koko in London. Hana then swayed over to rave about her absolutely adoring playing live and that it’s amazing connecting with all the people.
Laughingly she told us about her practicing concerts in her bedroom, which led us to wonder, if this helped her take her stage fright away. Hana then said that in Wales there is a Welsh traditional festival called ‘Eisteddfod’, where people as well as herself are on stage at younger ages, already being encouraged to join multiple competitions, so being on stage is her safe place. On the contrary, it was the other way around and she needed to learn how to be more confident in her life away from the stage, different from when she’s performing.
Her favourite memory from touring this year is a topic we briefly touched on already, the female only mosh pits. They started because at first no woman wanted to join the mosh pits, she then asked girls at the merch desk after a show why they didn’t join. These girls then replied that they would love to actually, they just don’t feel safe.
A video of one of these mosh pits posted on Hana’s Instagram unfortunately attracted a lot of men commenting negatively on it, but Hana of course didn’t change it up and is still doing them during her sets. So we were wondering why it was important to her to create that safe place. “The most important thing for me across the board is for anyone who wants to come to a Hana Lili show to create a space where they feel like they can be themselves”. It’s a conversation about it being more than okay for women to “let loose”, it’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to cry and about women deserving to feel safe. It stems from Hana sometimes feeling unsafe at gigs she’s attending, and she hopes to create a good experience for audience members.
An ongoing conversation in the music industry is that touring or playing live shows in general can take a toll on one’s mental health and one’s body. What helps is talking to fans at the merch desk after the show and drinking water and eating fruit. Super important for her is also to be upfront to the people around her about how she feels. Hana is also really appreciative of being able to pour the feelings she has back into her songs. Taking care of oneself should be up there too and she did shout out that venues in mainland Europe often take better care of artists than over in the UK.
In an Interview with Clash Magazine Hana touched on the topic of that outside of Wales there’s not much opportunity around the Welsh language. On a more positive note, in Wales up-and-coming artists are often supported! She told us about an amazing initiative called ‘Forté Project’, they “develop artists and give them opportunities to play in grassroot venues”. She’s grateful she grew up around a community like this, with a place to try different things.
She grew up with her first language being Welsh, but now she sings in English. She didn’t necessarily plan on doing so, but she enjoys it. It’s possible to express oneself in a different way compared to Welsh. The latter is similar to European languages actually! Her favorite Welsh word is “blodeuyn“, which means flower. Sometimes she says her co-writer and guitarist Ben has to correct her, but it’s also not more than that, it works perfectly fine otherwise. One day she’s wanting to release a song completely in Welsh actually, maybe part of her debut album, it’s a very beautiful language to her. Growing up she used to listen to Nirvana or No Doubt, which influenced her music and her singing in English too.
In April she released the self-titled EP Hana, which as the title suggests is very her. We asked how her own experiences shape her songwriting. Already early in the writing process she noticed that it was honest quite fast, it’s self-titled because she truly was herself during the process of creating it – “It’s shaped by my day-to-day life and the experiences I have. I’m trying to be a lot less apologetic about stuff”. “It goes back to that conversation about being a woman and how you look and how you dress and all these things that you think are so important in life and they’re actually not and actually just allowing myself to express myself”. It’s an ongoing process, she’s continuing to learn more and more to be more her and to give herself a little bit more grace.
The song ‘Sick Of Myself’, which is also part of her EP got additionally released as an unplugged version. Ben and her were in Poland and were saying how it would be fun to make another version of this song, especially because the honesty of this song would come to shine when acoustic.
On Instagram she also has a private account, @hanalilisilly, everyone is free to join though! For Hana it’s nice to have that extra space. There’s a group chat with the account, people are chatting with each other, a community is being built! Everyone can be themselves, can just have fun, and don’t have to be a certain way – “they’re very lovely people”.
New music is on the way already, Hana has been writing a lot in the past weeks, they will be rather rocky, grungy and simply who she already is. Hana said “where the wind takes me”, with no pressure or her being herself.
To finish the interview, Hana invited everyone reading this to join the @hanalilisilly account on Instagram and encouraged them to be themselves and to not put too much pressure on oneself. We also asked her what the last song she listened to was, which was ‘Duality’ by Slipknot.
Written by: Nora Jarach
Edited by: Marloes Joosen
