When it comes to creating music, artists will find all kinds of inspiration to put forth something that both defines and speaks to them. Some look to their favorite predecessors while others may use the environment in which they were raised.

ZADA employs a bit of the latter, but with a more contemporary element.

The singer, a native of Whistler, British Columbia by way of Ethiopia, infuses much of her daily activity and outdoor passions into her music. The folkloric nature of her soft voice and the accompanying instrumentals are very much informed by the snowy mountains and forests of Whistler, which she said helped shape her view on life balance and prioritizing physical health as well as being in the studio.

Over the past year, the 20-year-old has dropped numerous songs and videos showcasing her unique mix of Afrobeat and folk, propelled by breezy melodies and lyrics often galvanized by skiing, surfing, hiking, and other outdoor activities that occupy much of her time.

In both the song and video for her August track “Atlantic Times,” ZADA incorporates her love of being on the water and ponders the idea of recreating a lost connection after a spark between two people ignites but dims for one reason or another.

The idea of being a musician was simple for ZADA as she comes from a very melodic family. Picking up piano, guitar and poetry at a young age, it didn’t take long for her to put them all together – thanks in large part to the support she had from her parents. At 14, she mixed lessons from her father with a stack of vinyl records left behind by the previous owner of their family home.

“One day I went down and I pulled the stacks out and it's filled with Porgy and Bess and all these plays and Pavarotti and like this weird mix of music,” she described to BET. “[My dad would] put a record on, I would cut his hair. and then three months later we’d discover a new vinyl and then my brother would be there. So that's kind of the mashup that happened, and then I figured out what my sound was later on.”

It’s the curiosity that comes from listening to different types of music throughout her childhood and into adulthood that has allowed ZADA to be able to try her hand at numerous genres. To this day, she’ll go digging for a particular sound that will help grow her creatively and expand the organic sound she’s already developed.

“There's a part of me that is fully Canadian and is still Ethiopian, so having that marriage and that balance where it's a joy to explore a chord progression,” ZADA explained. “We'll sit and listen to a bunch of Ethiopian tracks for an hour, or we'll listen to Gigi, and we'll listen to like old sitar tracks and stuff like that.”

On her latest single “Sweet Things in Life,” ZADA draws from her own personal experiences with love and the familiar conflict between professional ambition and personal life.

“That was me recognizing that I had managed to create an environment where I could prioritize my physical health to some extent, because sometimes it does get hard to prioritize my creativity,” she said. “But then I was like, my love life…I've just completely ignored that and this is kind of catching up to me. Obviously things have changed since a year ago when I wrote that song, but it’s still relevant today as I'm obviously trying to manage that side of balancing.”

Looking ahead, ZADA plans on taking the experiences her journey has brought her and incorporating them in her new album. Currently untitled and aiming for an early 2024 release, the project is the result of personal discovery – an adventure she’s still very much on as she works to find consistency, both in her personal life and as a musician.

“I was still to some extent discovering the sound [with the released singles] but it wasn't like a panicked ‘Oh my god, what is this that I'm making?’” she said. “It was more like there's so much to the sounds I can relate to and love and I don't want to take any bit away.”

“With this record, I'm trying to hone in and a little bit more and obviously be more vulnerable. The theme around the album is human connection, specifically for me.”