The Power of Soraia
It was Friday, March 13, 2020. After months of hard work and dedication, Philadelphia-born rock band Soraia was ready to release their new album, Dig Your Roots. Having just played a show in Los Angeles, the band marked the occasion with an album release show in Las Vegas. It seemed that the stars were in alignment. But that same day, the U.S. declared COVID-19 a national emergency.
“For me, waking up on Friday morning the 13th in Vegas, I was feeling really upset,” says Soraia frontwoman, ZouZou Mansour. “We spent a lot of time writing these songs, and I spent most of the fall promoting and networking. I was just really upset at the same time that I felt so confident in the record. I don’t know how else to say it. I just laid there for like an hour. I wouldn’t look at social media.”
But Mansour isn't a stranger to adversity. With jet-black hair and a style that could resurrect rock and roll queen Janis Joplin, the high-voltage Soraia vocalist has been through enough in her life to render her indestructible. When she was just 17, right before she was about to begin her freshman year at Penn State, the Fairless Hills, Pa. native lost her mother to cancer. The unimaginable loss led her to drop out of college and head down a dark road of addiction, attempted suicide, and a near-death experience. But it's often in our darkest days that we find hope, and that's what Mansour did. She got sober, returned to college at St. Joseph’s University, where she finished her degree in secondary education, and started teaching ninth grade English at Nazareth Academy High School in Philadelphia. All the while, she was honing her craft as a musician, writing songs and performing at local open mic nights.
Mansour's life experiences have always informed her songwriting, and that's the case on Dig Your Roots. So it’s easy to understand the depth of what she was feeling on the morning of March 13, having released an album she poured her heart and soul into just as the world was beginning to shut down. But as news of the pandemic continued to catch fire, so did Soraia's new record.
“As soon as I did turn my phone on, I had a bunch of messages from people who did listen to the record and were telling me how amazing it was,” Mansour shares. “So, I was like, well, the world didn’t stop musically. But the rest of the tour ended up getting canceled and we started wondering. But we had an album to promote, so we just kept promoting it, and oddly enough we had more unique listeners on streaming services than we’ve ever had. Our album kind of blew up in that area for us, compared to our last records. So it was almost like people were more open to listening to something new. Plus, we were getting on a lot more playlists, and so the album was getting a lot more attention than it would have.”
There was a lot of momentum leading up to this album. Early on in their careers, Soraia—which also features Travis Smith on bass, Brianna Sig on drums, and Nick Seditious on guitar—caught the attention of legendary Grammy-winning rock band, Bon Jovi. Soraia’s 2007 independently released album, Shed the Skin, featured a guest appearance by guitar great and longtime Bon Jovi member, Richie Sambora. The relationship between Soraia and Bon Jovi continued as they had the chance to open for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees at Milwaukee's Summerfest in 2009, then again in 2010 in Saratoga, NY, and then once more in 2011, for a performance at Philadelphia's Wells Fargo Center (on Jon Bon Jovi's birthday, no less), marking their first true arena gig and their largest ever hometown show. Then, two years later, Jon Bon Jovi gave his ultimate stamp of approval when he co-wrote five of the songs that appeared on Soraia’s 2013 album, In the Valley of Love and Guns.
That same year, the band started to attract a new fan to their shows—like longtime member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, Steven Van Zandt, who called their song “Love Like Voodoo” the “coolest song in the world” on his SiriusXM show. In 2015, Soraia released the EP Less Than Zero, featuring the catchy, ’80s arena rock-flavored track, “Electrocutioner,” which again earned a nod as the “coolest song in the world.” Van Zandt was sold, and in 2016, he signed Soraia to his Wicked Cool Records label—a high achievement for an up-and-coming band.
“He’s always guided me,” Mansour says of working with Van Zandt. “If I ever asked him for help or asked him for a favor, he’s always done it, if he could. He’d always follow through, he’s
“Philly is very much a DIY kind of town with plenty of opportunities and clubs to hone your craft,” she says. “The bookers/promoters really help build the bill. We realized we needed to be serious right away and all in, or go home.”
But Mansour’s love for the tour life wasn’t born overnight—or even over the last few years. It’s been there for as long as she can remember. By the second grade, Mansour knew she wanted to be a singer. She got a taste of touring early on, with glee club in high school, traveling and performing across the tri-state area. Those experiences made her realize that’s what she wanted to do with her life.
“When I was on the bus one time, I remember looking at my friend KiKi and I was like, ‘This is what I want to do with my life’,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to do music. And there’s nobody in my family who did it, so that came from inside, so I trust that.
The success Soraia has experienced since 2013 is not just a result of the band’s raw talent and unwavering determination. Through hard work and personal growth, Mansour has conquered the obstacles that come along with being a frontwoman in a genre that, for decades, has been largely male dominated.
“I feel like, as a woman in the industry and knowing different things that have occurred because I’m a woman—not being taken seriously by certain people, and also trying to be told what I should and shouldn’t do, musically—I felt that was much easier to do to me when I didn’t have as much of my own character,” she says. “I didn’t know what I wanted. I liked so many different bands and genres and types of singing that I didn’t know what to focus on. And I seemed to find a lot of people, mostly male, that told me what I should do if I wanted to be successful. And I was in a place where I believed it.”
That’s a narrative that Mansour no longer buys into. Now, she has a different view of what success is, and always advocates how important it is to take the time to know who you are before you commit to working with anyone who may impact your career.
“For me, I just want the right people to hear the message that the music is putting out there,” she explains. “And I believe in that. I believe that I’m honest in my songwriting, so it’s going to attract the people that it needs to.”
She also credits the iconic women of rock who came before her for showing her what was possible.
“If I didn’t see Joan Jett, and I didn’t see Courtney Love, and I didn’t see Pat Benatar, and I didn’t see Tina Turner and The Cranberries, if I didn’t see all those female-fronted acts, whether it’s all-female bands, or a female on her own, or there’s two, like Heart—if I didn’t see that, I didn’t know it would be possible for me,” she shares.
The Soraia lineup as it exists today has been together for the better part of four years, since they signed with Van Zandt’s label in 2016. Fellow songwriter and bassist Travis Smith has been with Mansour since 2005. Smith co-wrote five of the songs on Dig Your Roots with Mansour, including “Superman Is Gone” and “Wild Woman.” The album also features the first co-write for drummer Brianna Sig on “Don’t Have You.”
“Travis and I have been together for a long time,” Mansour says. “There’s good chemistry and writing there. There’s a mutual artistic respect. Brianna has been with us a really long time and is a huge part. She’s done all the artwork and the t-shirt designs. She’s gone along for everything that we’ve done. She’s submitted songs for writing, and we’ve done that together. We’re all like the same, equal.”
This chemistry is so clearly prevalent on Dig Your Roots. It’s an album of transformative songs about personal growth and coming to terms with the light and dark that lives in us all. It’s a perfect deviation from Dead Reckoning, which, as Mansour explains, was about knowing where you were, but not knowing where you wanted to be.
“I thought about our record Dead Reckoning,” Mansour says. “Dead reckoning is a nautical term. A ship doesn’t have a map to where it’s going next, but from where it is, it can figure out where it has to go. All those songs—I knew where I was, but I didn’t know where I wanted to be, so Dead Reckoning fit that title.”
By Crystal Larsen
