Maïa Barouh

Maïa is a unique singer and flautist.
From a French-Japanese background, she has clearly found her way towards a boundless musical self-expression, rooted in solid classical training and a unique rendition of her heritage.
The audience can expect to be transported along the Paris-Tokyo axis to space and beyond.
She describes her style as ELECTRO-ROOTS-POP-PUNK .
Maïa sings using an unknown special throat technique from a small island in the South of Japan, mixing it with modern and electric sounds, but the flute is her first instrument. After studying classical and jazz, she quickly transformed the way she played as she started making her own music, improvising, singing with her flute and using it as percussion.

After much going back and forth between Paris and Tokyo, the teenager began her career in the Tokyo underground playing the saxophone with Japanese street band, accompanying dragqueens, dancers and musicians from all edges. she multiplied the tours and concerts throughout the archipelago, releasing albums produced "Kusamakura" a compilation of the new Japanese scene.
But this latest project, produced by the legendary Martin Meissonnier (who has worked with the likes of Fela Kuti, Robert Plant & Jimmy Page, Khaled and Manu Dibango) is something completely new.

The earthquake and the nuclear accident that hit Japan on March 11, 2011 marked a turning point in Maïa’s development as a musician. The man-made catastrophe and the destruction that followed pushed her to re-root herself deeply in the musical traditions of Japan, gathering the songs of fishermen, sailors, party songs from Fukushima which she calls as "Japanese bleus" and take them out to the wider world, in her own interpretation, while integrating also her compositions.

The album "KODAMA" got released in France UK and Japan in 2015.

Backed by powerful musicians and a free-flowing instinct that transcends national borders, Maïa offers an extraordinarily broad melodic landscape where melancholy and madness ride over percussive grooves, trance-like dance tunes and stripped-down a cappella singing.

"Striking stage presence, crazy folk trance, volcanic energy, traditional and pop Japanese singing and occasional touches of flute make up the exciting mix that is Maïa Barouh.”

Maïa Barouh’s tracks

• HAFU by Maïa Barouh