Louis J. Butler, aka Louis VI, is a Mixed race Rapper, Musician, Film Composer, Documentary Maker, Zoologist and Nature activist. He gave a keynote speech at COP26 about the colonial legacy of Climate Change and the alienation of people of colour in the UK from access to nature, which came from his award- winning documentary with POCC and Tanya Ramsurrun called “The World Is (Y)ours” aimed at getting young black and brown people to vote based on climate issues in the last election.
Louis was recently invited to deliver a keynote speech rallying cry at Beyond the Music festival in Manchester highlighting why the music industry needs to lead, and empower it’s musicians to speak out on climate change and biodiversity loss. Louis VI was also guest of honour and speaker at BBC’s annual Climate Creatives event where he spoke and presented his new upcoming film “NATURE AIN’T A LUXURY” at the BBC Broadcasting house to BBC guests and Commissioners on the subject of intersectionality and climate change. Louis was recently enlisted as a member of Earth Percent, a charity founded by Brian Eno aimed to tackle sustainability and the climate crisis within the music industry.
However most recently it is the message in his music that has been getting attention – using music as a new more relatable, contemporary and culturally connected way of talking about climate change; especially of the diaspora. Louis VI’s new album EARTHLING, earned massive press and radio support with a 5* review in The Guardian and Observer and 6 Music, Lauren Laverne, Mary-Anne Hobbs and Gilles Peterson all throwing their weight behind it. The album centres the climate justice movement amid more personal musings in Louis VI’s woozy, psychedelia-tinged soundscapes – weaving together a love for melody and a multitude of genres (hip-hop, sweet licks of Afrobeat, jazz, funk, electronic), all produced by Louis himself, it’s cut through with atmospheric field recordings that pull from his time spent in the natural world: storm sounds from the Amazon rainforest sit alongside lush birdsong from woodland in the UK. As both a musician and a nature geek, the mixed-race (Dominica, France and UK) artist’s “EARTHLING” is full of timely lyrics ruminating gently on questions about individualism, climate justice, race, love, colonialism, capitalism and the state of the nation.