Our 1st guest is the Franco-Japanese artist Maïa Barouh who is releasing a new album Aida at Saravah.
Singer, flautist, author, composer and arranger, Maia Barouh is a unique artist mixing Japanese ancestral songs with Franco-Japanese rap, groove, electro, song with great freedom. One of her particularities is her great vocal technique – largely unknown coming from an island south of Japan which she associates with her flute, percussive and insolent. The German press calls her “the punk Shaman!” Maïa has this exceptional ability to create improbable mixtures. This is where his inimitable and recognizable style is born.
Cradled by music in the wake of her father Pierre Barouh, Maïa took to instruments such as the piano, guitar and percussion very early on. But, the flute was his first weapon to face the job. She began her career at the age of 16 in the Tokyo underground, playing the flute in rock groups, saxophone in a Japanese street brass band, accompanying drag-queens, dancers strippers, Guinean and Brazilian griot musicians…. Before to set up her own group based on electric bass and percussion, where her singing will become central with which she will perform concerts and tours throughout the archipelago.
After 11 years of career in Japan, the meeting and collaboration with the famous producer Martin Meissonnier (Fela Kuti, Robert Plant & Jimmy Page, Khaled, Don Cherry, Manu Dibango…) will bring her to Paris to produce the album “Kodama» which will make it tour all over Europe, for 5 years, before preparing his brand new project «AIDA“. AIDA means between two in Japanese. It’s an album evoking her Franco-Japanese identity, Asian racism, exodus and feminism.
Produced by Maïa over several years, directed by MAJiKer (English producer known for his work with Camille or Berywam), the heart of his research was to compose from his base which is singing and the flute, and find a natural way to mix his two languages by working with rapper Elea Braaz, to find the accuracy of French words on Japanese ancestral melodies, or to make French sound like Japanese on a rap.
Along with the release of her stunning new single and music video from TOKYO ONDO which made more than 50,000 views in 1 week, Maïa challenges herself again for the stage. Contrary to her album produced with electro sounds, she decides to launch herself into voice guitar because yes, nobody knows it, but Maïa also plays the guitar and has a hell of a rock style, groove with sounds of Brazilian times! You can see her perform in Paris and its regions.
With her extensive stage experience, her madness, her volcanic energy and her boundless musicality, Maïa Barouh takes us to the heart of her roots where melancholy and trance, groove and electronic music, ancestral rap and singing come together, and seize the audience. by his voice that takes you to the guts!
Titles performed at the Grand studio
-Hafu Live RFI see the clip
-Ringofrom the album Aida see the clip
-Tokyo Ondo Live RFI see the clip.
Line Up : Maia Barouhsinging, Aksel Bahouchekeyboards, machines, Delphine Langhoffbattery.
Sound: Mathias Taylor, Benoît Letirant.
► Scrapbook Aida (Saravah 2022).
Maïa Barouh to read on RFI Musique (2015).
Then we receive El Comunero for the album release Raices and Semillas.
Tomas Jiménez is a songwriter and performer. Singer and multi-instrumentalist (strings and percussion), he officiates in the group EL COMUNERO, which he formed in 2008 in tribute to his grandfather, a Spanish Republican fighter. The group releases its 5th album Raices and Semillas.
In 1998, he created the French song group L’AIR DE RIEN with which he made his debut on the stages of France, Spain, Switzerland and Belgium and with whom he notably recorded two songs with the OGRES DE BARBACK (a million children, the road to rom).
He also collaborates with many artists as in 2013, where he performs on stage and records a mini-album with the group ZEBDA for a tribute to Victor Jara, or on the tribute album to Mano Solo from Les Hurlements d’Léo published in 2015 and album Global Stereo of HDL.
He composes music for documentaries (Angel, a childhood in exile, The solidarity crossing, etc.), plays (Fragments d’Exil) and animated films (Boléro-Paprika for which he won the best animated short soundtrack at the international festival “Voix d’étoiles 2018”, Above all, Rojava…).
For several years, he has also led writing workshops in schools, prisons and refugees, notably with CIMADE.
He is also the author of short stories (in the Brigadistes collections published by Caïman in 2016, 1917, October Rouge Nouvelles Noires published by Arcane17 in 2017, Des Nouvelles de Mai 68, published by Du Caïman in 2018), BAD REPUTATION published by . Arcane17, Une Plongée dans le Noir to be published in 2023 by M+, and stories for children (Mondial Stereo, book/disc of Leo’s Howls published in October 2019).
Titles performed at the Grand studio
– The Cara Quemada Walk Live RFI
– Rosario dinamiterafrom the album Raices y Semillas
– Destellos de Esperanza Live RFI.
Line Up: Thomas Jiménezvocals, guitar), Jocelyn Gallardoaccordion.
Sound: Benoît Letirant and Fabien Mugneret
► Scrapbook Raices and Semillas (Wanna Talk About It 2022)