Music in COVID Times: An interview with Lilo González
“Music has been a survival thing for me since I was little,” says local musician Lilo González, who purchased his first guitar right after arriving in the Washington, D.C. area in the ’80s, during the civil war in his native El Salvador. In fact, one of his earliest memories was listening to his grandmother’s singing.
*Part of our series interviewing artists about how they have adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic
With limits on the number of people allowed in the studio as well, the pandemic took much of the social out of the recording experience. González says it was particularly hard not being able to share a meal with the other band members.
“Usually, after like four hours of recording, you take a little break—but you cannot do that [now],” he says.
Before the pandemic, González—known to his youngest fans as “Mr. Lilo”—often performed at schools in the Washington, D.C. area. However, school visits were complicated during the pandemic, especially during the colder months.
Eventually, González switched his live performances to Zoom, which brought new challenges as his audience is mostly composed of children between the ages of 2 and 6, but González observed that he’s constantly adapting.
He soon got to work improving the more technical aspects of performing from home. He also made changes to his regular repertoire, adding songs he hoped would help children understand what’s going with the pandemic. He tried to uplift the kids who have been open with him about serious matters such as family loss.
“The most important thing to me is to make them happy, to make them sing and dance, and hop, hop, hop even for 25 minutes, once a week,” González says.
[Video courtesy of Rick Reinhard; zoom screenshot above from Hola Cultura’s interview; all other images courtesy of Lilo González]
When Mr. Lilo received his second COVID-19 vaccine shot, he pulled out his guitar and performed a favorite track from his first album. It’s called “The Boo Boo Song.” While he harmonized, the nurse pricked his upper arm to administer the vaccine.
“When I left [after my first shot] I saw these letters saying, ‘Please, tell people that you got the shot!’ I said, ‘Man, next time I will bring my guitar.’… [Although many people] “are afraid to go through this, they are at least laughing. They even called me to say, ‘Thank you, Lilo, gracias for doing that,’ says González, who was grateful for the opportunity to help the community. “That’s a small thing that we can do with music.”
His proclivity for sharing a positive message with his community through music goes back several decades, ever since he came to the United States from El Salvador 40 years ago. Although today he performs mostly for children, and is recognized by many as a troubadour for children in the multicultural, greater Washington, D.C., his fans didn’t always have a bedtime.
During the ‘90s and 2000s, González was awarded for his work as singer-songwriter. For instance, he won second place in both the Billboard Song Contest and the OTI Festival, a songwriting competition which included musicians from Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula—on top of earning five Washington Area Music Awards (WAMMIEs) while chronicling life in the Washington, D.C. area as a Salvadoran immigrant.
González receiving his second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at Mary’s Center in February 2021. Watch
What’s next for Washington’s children’s troubadour? Mr. Lilo—now fully vaccinated—is preparing for the long-awaited album release party for “Cuando Sea Grande” and is looking forward to going back to performing at schools as usual. He said he’s received invitations from a daycare center where the children are eager for him to return.
“They saw the video [of his sonorous second vaccination], and so they called me [and asked]:
“Mr. Lilo, are you ready?”
“Yes,” González told them.
He hopes this pandemic will teach us to be kinder to our neighbors and Mother Earth, so we can “leave a better world for these young generations.”
“I’m so happy, he says. “And hopefully, you know,very soon I can go to the other schools.”
You can purchase Mr. Lilo’s latest album as a physical copy on his websites:
https://www.mrlilo.com/
https://lilo-gonzalez-productions.square.site/
Or as a digital copy through Bandcamp: https://mrlilo.bandcamp.com/releases
—Interview by the COVID and the Community Story Group
—Written by Mariángel Villalobos
1 Response
Recent Stories
the greatest guy ever!