Maïa Barouh 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.

Maïa sings using a 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.

As a teenager she began her career in the Tokyo underground, playing the saxophone with a Japanese street band, and accompanying various drag queens, dancers and musicians.

However, after the earthquake and the nuclear accident that hit Japan on March 11th, 2011, Maïa was pushed to re-root herself deeply in the musical traditions of Japan, gathering the songs of fishermen and sailors, as well as party songs from Fukushima which she calls ‘Japanese bleus’ and sharing them with the world (with her own unique stamp on it, of course!)

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.