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POP MUSIC
Life in flux has defined Kelsey
Lu’s 20s — ever since the artist got
her break touring with Southern
rap crew Nappy Roots around 2011.
A singer and classically trained
cellist, she’s gained steady traction
in recent years for her ethereal and
haunting twist on pop.
In 2016, she released “Church,”
her debut six-song EP recorded
live with her cello and a loop pedal
at a church in Brooklyn. She’s col-
laborated with experimental video
artist Kahlil Joseph on short films.
She’s worked with Solange, Kelela
and Dev Hynes of Blood Orange,
further cementing herself as part
of a new wave of genre-bending
black artists. And, in April, she re-
leased her first full-length album,
“Blood,” through Columbia Re-
cords, home to superstar acts in-
cluding Beyoncé and Adele.
Sitting in her manager’s High-
land Park bungalow, Lu, 30, de-
scribed her whimsical, folk-soul
sound, which, she says, requires a
sense of openness and patience.
“My music isn’t something that
you hear all the time. It is some-
thing ... that has taken time and
thought and effort into making it,”
she said. “That’s something that,
in mainstream music, is lacking
nowadays.”
But the shift is happening.
Since “Blood’s” release, Lu has
been on a whirlwind tour, taking
her to the experimental micro-city
Arcosanti, Ariz., a Martha’s Vine-
yard art show, and overseas to the
Sydney Opera House, among
other places.
Lu wrote “Blood” over the
course of a few years at spaces
including the iconic EastWest
Studios in Hollywood and in the
U.K. In that time frame, she also
moved to Los Angeles — a city
where, she said, she found her com-
munity.
“Blood” is Lu’s foray into bigger
instrumentation and production.
She calls it an ode to her home and
her parents.
At the female-led festival Yola
Día in L.A. on Aug. 18, Lu began her
short and sultry set with “Blood’s”
opening track “Rebel.” The song
tells the story of her parents meet-
ing in the 1960s. After playing the
song’s rolling pizzicato intro, Lu
began to sing — her cello and bow
resting precariously in her left
hand while she gripped the micro-
phone with her right:
“Then when you went to art
school / Breaking hearts and all the
rules / You met the man of your
dreams / To society, he was uncon-
ventional / But you didn’t mind be-
ing outside.”
The song has a double meaning:
As an interracial couple, Lu’s par-
ents rebelled against the norms of
society at the time, and Lu herself
is something of a rebel — pushing
back on the way she was raised and
forging her own path.
Born Kelsey McJunkins, music
saturated Lu’s childhood in Char-
lotte, N.C.Her father, a portrait artist and
musician, blasted jazz while
playing congas in his studio. Her
mother played piano and took Lu
and her older sister to the Char-
lotte Symphony, where she grew
fascinated by the cello.
She followed her older sister’s
footsteps and began playing the vi-
olin at 5.
Lu recalled the moment she
knew she had to try the cello, at 9
years old. She was in the middle of
her violin lesson, but a cello was
“propped against a window,”
pulling her attention, Lu said, her
soft voice occasionally rising into a
full-bellied laugh.
“Just the moment I played it, I
fell in love with it. Something about
the way it just hit my body. The vi-
brations were so strong.”
Scarred by a karaoke session
gone awry (it involved Jennifer
Lopez’s 1999 hit “Waiting for
Tonight”), Lu sang in secret while
continuing her training in classicalmusic.
When she announced her plans
to sing instead of playing cello for a
high school talent show audition,
her mother laughed.
But when she sang Etta James’
“At Last,” her mother began cry-
ing. “She was like, ‘I didn’t know
you could sing.’ I was like, ‘Neither
did I.’ ”
While Lu found solace in music,
she also felt constrained by the
strict boundaries and confines of
the Jehovah’s Witness faith her
parents enforced. At 18, she left
home to attend the North Carolina
School of the Arts in Winston-
Salem.
It was there that she found ar-
tistic freedom during late-night
sessions in empty practice rooms.
“I started improvising over music
that I liked,” she said. “And then I
started collaborating with dancers
and mixing music with other forms
of art.”
Meeting like-minded artstudents continued to expand her
worldview, but Lu also found the
music conservatory setting sti-
fling. After a year, she left school
and began working at a restaurant,
where she connected with local
musicians.
“That was really what cata-
pulted finding my own voice,” she
said. While performing with a local
rapper, she caught the attention of
Nappy Roots, who invited her to
tour with them for the next year
and a half.
In between touring, she moved
to New York in 2012, taking her
cello, a smartphone and not much
else. She began making songs on
Garageband — her first, “Mon-
ster,” was created with empty wine
bottles, cardboard ridges and the
gentle meow of her sister’s kitten.
She learned to use a loop pedal, a
tool that gave her the power to lay-
er her songs and perform live with
her cello.
By the time Lu moved to L.A.,
she had honed her identity as an
artist. And importantly, found that
her “creative health” spiked in the
city.
She attributes that to getting
tuned into the black arts commu-
nity and finding her tribe at places
such as the alternative art space
Underground Museum.
When Kahlil Joseph first met Lu
at the Underground Museum, he
“assumed she was a big star,” the
artist said by phone, calling Lu
both “raw and refined.” Pretty
quickly, he could tell “there was a
deep soul but also an original voice
that was all her own,” he added.
Late last year, Lu organized one
of her favorite performances, an in-
timate show in a home designed by
the late Paul R. Williams, a prolific
black architect favored by Holly-
wood elite.
Performing songs from the not-
yet-released “Blood,” she was
backed by all-black string players,
including her older sister.
Being immersed in black art is
important to her because it’s per-
sonal.
“Lifting up and showing just
how diverse we are as people, espe-
cially in things like the arts and cul-
ture, where we’ve been either
muted or we’ve been stripped and
stolen,” she said. “So for me, it’s im-
portant to highlight the beauty
and bomb-ness that exists.”How a music ‘Rebel’ found her voice
Kelsey Lu got creative to
hone her artistic identity.
L.A.’s black arts scene gave
her a sense of community.
By Makeda Easter
KELSEY LU, a singer and classically trained cellist, onstage at the Hollywood Bowl on Sept. 24,- She first tried the instrument at 9. “Just the moment I played it, I fell in love with it,” she said.
Gina FerazziLos Angeles Times