In Bold: Louis VI
Art can motivate, inspire and unite us in ways that facts, figures and worrying headlines fail to.
That’s certainly what Louis VI found since combining his two greatest passions – music and nature.
“Art is a tool that we can use to cross difficult bridges. It can do that in a way where simple words fail – and they have failed in the past,” says Louis. “We like to think that we’re logical beings, but most of the decisions we make are based on our emotions and art speaks to those emotions in a powerful way.”
Louis is a rapper, musician, documentary maker and zoologist. He’s spoken at COP26, produced award-winning films and worked with the BBC’s Natural History Unit as a creator-in-residence.
We caught up with him recently to chat about how he decided to combine his music career with his love for the planet, where he finds inspiration in the face of huge global challenges, and how we can make conversations about climate action more inclusive.
Here's Louis’ story.
Growing bold
Louis isn’t sure where his love for nature began - it feels like it’s always been there.
“I was obsessed with David Attenborough as a kid. I used to tape over family videos with his documentaries. I was always into the creepy crawlies and the predators,” Louis recalls. “I grew up in North London, surrounded by a sea of council estates, but I was always fascinated by nature.”
A trip across the world to visit his family only heightened Louis’ passion and showed him an inspirational new perspective; “When I was 11 I went to Dominica, where my dad’s side of the family is from. It’s an island in the Caribbean, with beautiful black sand beaches. It's also got nine active volcanoes and so much pristine forest. It’s incredible.”
“As a young, mixed-race kid seeing this place that I’d heard about from my grandpa felt almost mythical. Nature is in control on that island and Dominicans are proud of it. It showed me another way to exist on this earth. That we could live in harmony with nature and have reverence for it.”
However, alongside Louis’ love for the planet was his love for music. “I went on to study zoology at university, but also began pursuing a career in music at the same time,” he explains. “I didn’t deliberately keep the two separate, but at the time I didn’t see the potential power in using music to talk about nature.”
Taking bold steps
So what made Louis combine his love for the planet with his love for music?
“In 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Dominica. Having a personal connection to the island and seeing how unfair it was that 70,000 people who had contributed little to nothing to climate change were having to deal with its catastrophic effects made me want to speak up,” he remembers. “I wrote a track for a compilation to raise money for Dominica. That was the first time I’d used music as a form of activism.”
“After Covid, I was talking to my sister and she said ‘Life is too short not to be your fullest, geekiest, most eccentric self. You need to combine the things that you love; combine the music and the nature.’ So I listened to her.”
Louis went on to create Earthling, an album that takes listeners on a musical journey around our planet’s ecosystem. “It explores what it means to be human and was my love letter to the planet,” Louis explains. “It was a total experiment in a way, but it performed differently to my previous music and opened doors I didn’t even know were there.
”One of those doors was to speak at COP26; “I didn’t know the climate space at that time. It felt very western, classist and exclusionary to me – it still does. But I thought ‘Well, I guess I am a zoologist…And maybe I can talk about this in a way that feels different and more relatable?’ Music is a good tool for that.”
“Visiting Dominica showed me another way to exist on this earth. That we could live in harmony with nature and have reverence for it.”
“The climate space can feel very Western, classist and exclusionary. Music is a good tool to bridge those divides.”
“Indigenous practices and knowledge are the source for all the answers to the climate problems we’re facing. We just need to start listening.”
“I know that if I spend some time amongst nature, I’ll feel better – and I’ll work better.”
Bold, but bigger
“I’m part of an amazing project with Brian Eno and Earth Percent. It’s called Sounds Right and adds Mother Nature as a featured artist to songs on platforms like Spotify and Apple,” Louis explains. “All of the money earned from those songs is then shared across sustainability projects around the world that have been started by incredibly indigenous experts and scientists. It’s a way of readdressing our attitude to nature and what we take from it.”
Rethinking our relationship with nature is also the sentiment behind Louis’ upcoming film, Nature Ain’t A Luxury. “The film talks about what it means to be a person of colour trying to access nature, but also our relationship to nature as young people,” he explains. “I really want to change the narrative that’s used to make a lot of wildlife and natural history documentaries and to bring nature a lot closer, so that it’s not always seen as this amazing cinematic thing that’s far from us. That it’s something we’re deeply connected to.”
And nature is about to get a lot closer to Louis, as he prepares to head to the Amazon; “I’ll be working alongside some incredible scientists, ecologists, biologists and indigenous activists from around the world. We’ll be meeting with the indigenous community of Sarayaku in Ecuador, which will be phenomenally special. To learn about their indigenous practices and knowledge – it’s the source for all the answers to the climate problems we’re facing. We need to learn to live in harmony with nature. Indigenous cultures do that, so we just need to start listening.”
Inspiring bold
“I grew up in a house of music and lots of my inspiration comes from rappers and musicians,” Louis shares. “People like Andre 3000, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Nas, Roots Manuva and Erykah Badu – I could keep going! They were all really quite core to how I saw the world and showed me that art could be powerful.”
To find both inspiration and peace, Louis encourages us all to spend some time outside; “Every time I feel stressed, I always ask myself ‘When was the last time you sat down in nature?’ It’s easy to put off when you feel tired or have too much work on and I forget about it all the time. But I know that if I spend some time amongst nature, I’ll feel better – and I’ll work better.”
“I believe that it’s the sounds of nature, more so than what it looks like, that make us feel good. If you sit and actively listen, you’ll hear something new. You’ll hear insects whizzing past or birds above your head. It’s those connections that will help us to realise what it really means to be a human on this planet – and that we should be protecting it.”
Bold future
So, what’s next for Louis?
“Soon I’m going on my first shoot with the BBC for Blue Planet 3 – which feels mad to say out loud,” says Louis.
And as Louis travels around the world to learn more about living in harmony with nature, and what we can do to protect it, he’s passing on the message to corporates, organisations and individuals who are looking to make meaningful steps in climate action:
“Everyone needs to be part of the solution – that includes creative people, businesses, CEOs, teachers, politicians and most of all, the public. Surely in any board meeting where you’re trying to solve a problem, if you come at it from only one perspective then you’re only going to get one type of solution. So, let’s start being more inclusive.”
“Finding solutions is complex and messy. Anyone who thinks they’ve got a clean solution to climate change is deluded,” says Louis. “It’s not going to be easy or clear. There are going to be many paths to take and they’ll all be tangled but that’s how life is. There is always hope. It’s all possible.”
Thanks for reading
We hope you feel inspired by Louis’ story.
“Finding solutions is complex and messy. There are going to be many paths to take to solve climate change and they’ll all be tangled but that’s how life is.”
