5月10日｜More Tokyo Music : Aragehonzi, TOW, onomatopel, Maïa Barouh

In our weekly collaboration with Moon Romantic we bring you the cream of the crop of the Tokyo live music scene. Every Wednesday you can find More than Music posted under the bright moon of Aoyama. So if you are a life music lover you simply can't miss out on this series!

【生演奏｜The Music】

アラゲホンジ （Aragehonji）

Formed in 2007 by songwriter Masafumi Saito from Yuzawa City, Akita Prefecture.
Based on the fusion of folk songs and traditional rhythms from the Tohoku region and other parts of Japan with pan-black music, we
present original updates to cover songs such as "Akita Ondo," "Soma Bon Uta," and "Ringo Oiwake." do.

In 2010, he appeared in “FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL ROOKIE A ​​GO-GO”, and
since then he has participated in music festivals all over the country, such as “SUKIYAKI MEETS THE WORLD” and “Under the Bridge World Music Festival”.
When the 2nd album "Takakaraze" was released in 2013, it attracted attention from many media such as newspapers, magazines, and radio.
On September 7, 2016, the 3rd album "Hanatsuoto" will be released.
Expectations are high for the new album, which has undergone further refinement and evolution.

TOW

TOW rings traditional to the ear, the duo evokes the mystic past of Japan but uses accordion and acoustic guitar to do so. Contradictory you say? Well, nevertheless you will never feel as in touch with Japan's history as when a single tear rolls down your cheek because Nue-san hit you right in the feels with her esoteric voice.
Nue and Kai bring downright beautiful music and they leave audiences in awe wherever they go, so come and be awe-struck!

TOW は日本の神秘的で伝統的な音をアコーディオンとギターで奏でます。言葉の説明だけでは想像もつかない演奏に圧倒され、ヌエの歌声で涙する。二人の音楽は見る人全員を魅了し、日本の歴史をも感じさせることだろう。

オノマトペル （onomatopel）

An irregular pop unit consisting of singer-songwriter Laura Yokozawa and pianist Takuto Kudo. Creates mysterious and peculiar music that combines rhythm, wordplay, and a world view of lyrics that incorporates allegorical stories such as Kenji Miyazawa, as well as classical impressionism, jazz, and pop. At live performances, they perform in a wide range of styles, from two-person duos, jazz quartets, string quartets, and 11-piece arrangements including wind instrument arrangements.
In 2019, the MV of the representative song "Hyakki Yakou" will be screened at the 4K VR Tokushima Film Festival. In 2020, the concert "Parallel World Ticket-Onomatopoeia and Mysterious Winds-", which incorporates a total of 11 musicians and VJs, will be a success at Shibuya Densho Hall. In 2021, he will be in charge of the theme song for Ireland's best-selling picture book "Where are you, Puffin? Adventures on Skellig Island".

マイア・バルー (Maia Barouh)

Maïa Barouh is a French-Japanese singer, flautist, songwriter and producer. 

Her soundworld is a unique mix of traditional Japanese singing (or “Nippon Blues” as she calls it), electro, pop and rap with lyrics in French and Japanese. 

Described as a “punk shaman” by the German press, she effortlessly blends elements from her musical heritage with contemporary sounds to create a distinctive marriage of both cultures. Her inimitable and idiosyncratic style comes from her ability to fuse together unexpected musical and cultural forms.

She combines her percussive and playful flute playing with a distinctive vocal timbre, partly inspired by the traditional singing technique of Amami, a southern Japanese island.

Following in the musical steps of her father, legendary chanson writer and producer Pierre Barouh, Maïa learned piano, guitar and percussion from an early age, but it was the flute that would become her main instrument of choice. 

It was in the underground cabaret scene of Tokyo that she began her career aged 17, playing flute in rock groups, subsequently performing saxophone in a Japanese street brass band alongside drag queens, dancers and strip tease artistses. She would later continue her father’s legacy by curating and releasing on the label he founded (Saravah) a compilation of underground Japanese artists, as well as inviting the freshest Tokyo talent to perform in France in a show she named “Le Cabaret Shinjuku”. 

She has also collaborated with African and Brazilian musicians and DJ’s, before creating her own band where singing became the key ingredient. After 11 years of touring right across the Japanese archipelago, she decided to settle in her other native land, France.

In Paris she created the album “Kodama” with the renowned produced Martin Meissonnier (Fela Kuti, Robert Plant & Jimmy Page, Khaled, Don Cherry, Manu Dibango…) and toured all around Europe for 5 years, before starting work on her brand new project “AIDA”; an album which sonically and lyrically explores her French-Japanese identity. 

With a distinctive soundworld built around her two main instruments, flute and voice, “AIDA” (which means “between”) is a raw, spacious and thought-provoking album, which also manages to be playful, quirky and at times disconcerting, for example when she explores anti-Asian racism and feminism. Maia produced the album herself in collaboration with English producer MaJiKer best known for his work with French alt-pop artist Camille and the beatbox group Berywam.

Maïa is also playing and singing for a dance show of the amazing well-known contemporary dancer called “Vestige” and she composed the whole music for the theater piece “Voyage dans mon ventre”

With her extensive stage experience, quirky style, volcanic energy and limitless creativity Maïa Barouh takes us on a trip, where tribal music and electro rub shoulders with pop and rap. This is her radical approach to reinventing her roots.