While Living in the Congo, She Started Writing Lyrics

“The first time I wrote a song was when I was 16 years old,” she said. “I was living back in the Congo in a small town called Pambwa. I felt the need to write a song and express myself. And as a teenager, it’s hard sometimes to write down what I was feeling. I’m French, and, at the time, I wasn’t living in France. So I started to ask a lot of questions about my own roots, and that really inspired me to write songs.”

That Song Was About Being in Love

“The first song I ever wrote was about the town [I lived in] and my first love while I was living in the Congo,” she said. “And it’s not on the album, but it was mostly about me as a teenager.”

She Grew Up During the Making of ‘Zanaka’

“It’s really evolved over time. I wrote ‘Come’ when I was 16 years old,” Jain revealed. “The version of the song now is very different from what it was. It’s grown up a little bit. And there’s a song called ‘Makeba.’ I wrote that in 2015. So it’s an album that really grew up with me. It’s been with me through my childhood, teenage-hood and now. So it’s something that’s really followed me around the country and where I lived.”