Lole Usoali’i

Lole Usoali’i was born in Samoa. Then her family moved to Wellington, New Zealand, where she spent her childhood. Since a very young age, Lole was very interested in music. While in school, she sang in the church choir. New Zealand was the place where her exciting music career took off. She went on to work with famous musicians, receive a Pacific Music Award and create two independent labels in Samoa and NZ. When she was a teenager, Lole already knew that she‘d devote her life to music. She performed at local bars and clubs and joined several local bands. By the end of 1994, Lole moved to Auckland, where she met the famous producer Phil Fuemana, whom everyone knew as “Godfather of South Auckland”. He took one of the young woman’s songs and included it into his compilation LP Urban Pacific Christmas (1994). The success of the album, allowed Lole to move further up her career ladder and prove herself in the music world. Soon one of her songs appeared on Matty J’s album.

In 1995, Lole released her first single “Just Wanna” after signing a contract with Papa Pacific label. However, shortly, Papa Pacific virtually sold her contract to Deepgrooves, since the former was planning to close. Lole didn’t like the way she was forced to switch labels. In one of the interviews, she talked about this switch as if it happened behind her back. Probably it was the time when she first started thinking about creating her own independent label. In 1997, Lole recorded a cover version of Roberta Flack’s song “Feel Like Making Love”. The same year she was named the Most Promising Female Artist at the New Zealand Music Award ceremony. She was making plans for recording a studio album with Deepgrooves. In 1998, she even started recording some songs. However, the LP never saw the light. In 2000, Lole made a decision to create her own independent label called Sista Records after receiving financial support from two New Zealand companies. Initially, she planned to release an album called The Samoana Project, which included her own songs mixed with traditional Samoan melodies. Later, she shortened the name and released Samoana (2000). The singer was becoming more and more popular every day. It was tough to book Lole Usoali’I for any event.

In 2004, Lole moved to Samoa, where she created another independent label Roots Down Records. She made a decision to walk away from the pop music and dedicate herself to world music. Lole obviously made the right decision because she managed to sell more than 250,000 copies of the albums released by the label. In 2007, the singer recorded her most popular album The Movement – Poly Album. A year later, she was awarded at Pacific Music Awards as the Best Female Artist. In 2009, one of her songs “Tu I Luga” from the LP The Movement made it to the opening of a boxing match. The popularity of the match allowed the song to stay at the third spot of NZ iTunes chart for 10 weeks in a row. In 2012, Lole earned an honor to be called Best Polynesian Female Artist Worldwide at the International Polynesian Music Awards.