ZOTO

ZOTO is a duo composed of Zoé Renié Harris (1992), singer and guitar player, and her brother Tom Renié Harris (1995), singer.

Their musical collaboration began in family gatherings sometimes ending up in a brother/sister clash. They started to write songs together in the late summer of 2015. Their music is the reflection of their young lives, origins, different trips and souls, from where they draw their inspiration. 

The duo’s mother comes from England, but her parents were Jamaican. She brought them up listening to Miles Davis, James Brown, Bob Marley, Ella Fitzgerald, Otis Redding… Their French father created them original mixtapes for their Fisherprice K7 mixing rock (The Clash, Radiohead…), folk (Bob Dylan, Nick Drake…), world music (Compay Segundo, Salif Keita, Caetano Veloso..) and hip hop (Outkast, Dr Dre…)

Zoé and Tom spent most of their lives in Paris – France where both were born, but they moved to Cuba – Havana in 1999, and stayed there with their family until 2001. Since 2012-13, they don’t live in the same city anymore, Zoe living in different places around the world for her studies (Montréal, Barcelona, North Carolina, south of France) while Tom stayed in Paris. This, plus the fact that they needed to grow musically each in their own direction made it impossible for them to write songs together.

They recently decided to begin a new chapter of their lives, writing, composing, singing, basically working together. Their music is a mix between nu-soul and folk music, with multiple influences ranging from Colombian Cumbia to Congolese Soukous.