"My mum trained to be a singer her whole life, but she never got to live her dream. The second that I was born, she passed that dream on to me — she was like, you're going to be a singer," Lailana tells me. Now a Dalston-based singer-songwriter, Lailana has lived in the UK since she was 16. Her music can perhaps best be described as alternative indie soul, shaped by her childhood opera training and a rich mix of cultural identities.
Founder of music collective TaoSol, Lailana runs jam sessions at The Jago in Dalston, created to form the artist community she so craved. Having gone to business school, which she describes as "the kind of school where you'd have to wear suits six days a week," she managed to find solace in forming a band with the only other two musical people on her course. Her love of jam sessions began after she moved to East London following graduation.
"I hadn't seen my band in a year and a half because of Covid. And my drummer told me to come to The Jago. When I arrived I couldn't see my band anywhere, and then a woman on stage points at me and says, 'You're a singer, huh?' And I got on stage and sang with her for 20 minutes, and I thought, this is amazing." This woman, Carol Therese Beausaint, is a fellow singer-songwriter who has become a mentor for Lailana over the years. "After that I became addicted to jamming. I was at The Jago maybe three times a week, I'd go to the Shacklewell Arms for Peng Femme Jam, Colour Factory for Orii Jam. Wake up, work, jam, sleep."
It was in 2022, while living in a house of music and dance artists, that Lailana decided to start her own jam, driven by the desire for somewhere DJs and musicians could perform together. "A lot of the jams I was going to would really focus on either one genre or one kind of musician or art form. I wanted to bring everything together. It doesn't matter what instrument you play, if you don't play an instrument, if you're a dancer, a DJ…"
The name TaoSol is a nod to Lailana's mixed Lebanese, Palestinian and Filipino heritage. In her mother's native Tagalog, "tao" means human, while "sol" comes from the Arabic word "tawasol", meaning connection. Within the TaoSol group, Lailana has "never felt this level of human connection with anyone. No networking event can buy what you get at a jam session".
It's this support network that has given Lailana the confidence to write and record new music for the first time in five years. "I finally now feel comfortable to actually go back into my classical training, to go back into the theatrics of it and the opera side of things." Writing and recording is a collaborative process within the group: "We all kind of help each other out. If someone needs a vocalist I'm like, 'Guys, I'm here'. If we need a string section we've got our lovely cellist Mal, if we need a horn section we've got Luukas." Lailana plans to release her new music later this year.
Growing up in Dubai, much of the music she could hear was heavily censored, though she found early inspiration in artists like Placebo, Avril Lavigne and the legendary Arabic singer Fairuz. In her new music, Lailana leans more into exploring her identity: "I write about my Arab side and my Filipino side, my family, a lot about faith. It's all the stuff I was too scared to say before when I was releasing music. When I first started out I had so many people telling me, 'Do not mention you are half Palestinian, do not do that.'" A quick glance now at Lailana's Instagram page (@lailooneh) makes it clear that she no longer shies away from her roots: she helps organise Palestine fundraisers and proudly displayed flags at Glastonbury last year.
"There are certain parts of East London that feel very performative and some parts that still feel very real and raw. The Jago is one of those places for me that still feels real." TaoSol is already growing into other venues across London, and Lailana wants to take it further, to the rest of the UK, spreading the energy of human connection and the joys of creating together.
TaoSol is on at The Jago every other Wednesday at 440 Kingsland Road, E8 4AA
