LONDON â Just a few years ago, Fatima Zahra Hafdi was working in a series of hair salons in Montreal, hoping to one day find her true creative passion in life.Â
Next month, she steps onto the stage as La Zarra in perhaps the worldâs most famous music competition, the Eurovision Song Contest, where she will represent France with the track "Ăvidemment" (âObviouslyâ). She co-wrote the song with Benny Adam, and they co-produced it with fellow Montrealers Banx & Ranx.
Countries all across Europe send an artist or band with a three-minute song to Eurovision every May. Among its most famous winners? CĂ©line Dion, who won for Switzerland in 1988.
Last year, 161 million viewers watched the contest on television, with many more watching online.
Unlike Dion, who was essentially parachuted into Switzerland just for Eurovision, La Zarra is already well known in France. Her biggest hit to date, 2021âs "Tu tâen iras" (âYouâll Leaveâ) went platinum there and led to her winning the francophone Breakout Songwriter Award at the 2022 Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) Awards.
La Zarraâs first foray into the music industry was a featuring credit on "Printemps blanc" (âWhite Springâ) with French rapper Niro in 2016.
âIt was my first song ever,â she said in a phone interview in March, speaking in both English and French. "I just did it because (my producer Adam) asked me and then I went back to my regular life (as a hairdresser in Montreal).â Her next song would be released in 2020.
"I did a lot of small jobs that I didnât really like. I think I never stuck more than three months in a job because I couldnât. For me, it didnât make sense to do something I donât like and then die. Lucky me, music got into my life.â
La Zarraâs music integrates the American rap and pop she was exposed to in Montreal with French chanson, a form of French pop music especially popular in the mid-1900s that emphasizes the lyrics and often has a working-class vision of the world. This is the music her mother would sing to her as a child, and is epitomized by Edith Piafâs "La vie en rose" and "Non, je ne regrette rien."
â(Piaf is) kind of like my singing teacher. In the song, you can feel love, you can feel emotions that you donât have in real life. That kind of music helped me escape reality.â
La Zarra was born and raised in Montreal as the third of seven children in a Moroccan-Canadian family. She describes her childhood as happy, but didnât discuss her Moroccan roots at the beginning of her career, she says, because she didnât want people to put her in a box.
She has also never divulged her age online, and is slightly baffled but plays along when incorrect numbers are thrown out. âI donât know why people are so obsessed with my age. (Is it) because Iâm a woman? ⊠to compare me? But I think itâs funny so they will never know.â
What she couldnât hide, though, was her talent.
âWhen I decided that I wanted to do (music) at the end of 2019, I (had) just four demo songs and everybody was amazed. I was like, âOK, thatâs easy!â
âAfter that, (there were) ups and downs. Itâs really hard work, because itâs day and night ... And now, I see that my mother is already relieved that I can live off of music. Those close to me see that music pays, and I think Iâm making them proud.â
In recent years, France has chosen its Eurovision entrant via a televised contest.Â
But the head of the French delegation to Eurovision, Alexandra Redde-Amiel, says she was ready to cancel the national competition if La Zarra agreed to represent them.Â
La Zarra, who lives in Paris, had been approached in previous years but it was never the right timing, and she didnât see herself entering the selection contest. Sheâd already started writing âĂvidemmentâ before Redde-Amiel approached her, and then reworked it for Eurovision with Adam and Banx & Ranx.
âWe loved it immediately when she suggested it to us. Itâs the great French chanson but with a strong, Eurovisionesque refrain that stays in your head,â says Redde-Amiel. âItâs very 'Emily in Paris.'â
La Zarra says Redde-Amiel told her she'd be the perfect representative for France "because of my music, of what my lyrics say, and of how I represent womanhood.â
France also hopes to gain an advantage with La Zarra's international connections this year, as for  the first time ever, viewers from non-participating countries â including Canada and Morocco â will be able to vote online and through the Eurovision app.
To promote the song, La Zarra performed at a Eurovision pre-party in Madrid, although she had to pull out of similar performances in Amsterdam and London two weekends ago for family reasons.Â
Social media promo efforts may also have helped the song reach 3.3 million views on YouTube, the fourth highest among the 38 competing songs.
La Zarra is currently fourth in the betting odds. The BBC has called âĂvidemmentâ a âpotential winnerâ and describes the song as âquietly gorgeous, like a sort of Sunday morning Dua Lipa.â
âFollowing in the footsteps of CĂ©line Dion, whoâs had an incredible career â itâs a bit of pressure, but Iâm confident in my work and I hope to be up to the task and to be able to do justice to my predecessors,â says La Zarra. (Natasha St-Pier, from New Brunswick, also represented France in 2001, finishing fourth.)
âĂvidemment,â like La Zarraâs other singles to date, is entirely in French.Â
She intends to release music in English within the next two years or so, but under a different stage name â La Zarra will remain francophone. La Zarra would also like to export her French music to the English-speaking world.Â
âPeople who sing in Spanish do well in the English market,â she notes. âWhy not French music?â
As one of the âBig Fiveâ nations that contributes the most financially to Eurovision, France has automatically qualified for the final. Canadians can watch on YouTube and vote for La Zarra (or their other favourites) on May 13.
Jeffrey Mo is a London-based freelance writer from Calgary.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 26, 2023.Â
Jeffrey Mo, The Canadian Press
