Karly-Marina Loaiza is a Colombian-American singer and composer better known as Kali Uchis.
Drunken Babble, her debut mixtape, was released in 2012, and Por Vida, her debut EP, was released in 2015. Uchis received critical acclaim for her debut studio album Isolation, which was published in 2018.
What is Kali Uchis’s nationality and ethnicity?
Karly-Marina Loaiza was born in Alexandria, Virginia on July 17, 1994. Her father traveled from Pereira, Colombia, to the United States in the late 1980s, when he met Karly’s mother. Hence, Uchi is a Colombian-American and belongs to a mixed ethnicity. Her mother is from Virginia and has children from a previous marriage.
Loaiza is their only child together. When Loaiza was in high school, her father returned to Colombia to care for his mother, who had become unwell. Loaiza spent the summer in Colombia with her father, uncles, and aunts. She would spend the school year with her mother and elder siblings.
In high school, Loaiza learned to play piano and saxophone. She participated in a jazz band, before her graduation from T. C. Williams High School (renamed Alexandria City High School).
She frequently missed school to spend time at the photo lab, where she created experimental short films. Her passion for photography inspired her to create mixtape cover art. Because she skipped class and violated her parents’ curfew, she was evicted from her house. During this time, she lived in her car and recorded songs on her piano, which later became Drunken Babble, her lo-fi mixtape.
ncG1vNJzZmifmJa7orLUqGWcp51kxKmt02agrGWblrmqedScn6KrXaOutbXOp5iloaSueqK6w2acraCenrCqwNho