Three-time Queensland Music Award winners MZAZA deliver Balkan-French inspired sounds to folk lovers.
Led by enchanting French-Sephardic vocalist Pauline Maudy, this group of musicians from around the world has been mesmerising audiences with powerful and inspired performances.Their most recent studio album was 2020's 'The Birth & Death Of Stars', a 12-track record that Maudy devised an accompanying theatre show in collaboration with director Benjamin Knapton (Circa).
Festival favourites (MONA FOMA, Queensland Music Festival, Cygnet, National and Woodford Folk Festivals), MZAZA have also supported the likes of Violent Femmes, Yasmin Levy, Melbourne Ska Orchestra, Baba Zula & Baro Banda, and DJ Click.
MZAZA will return to the stage next month when they join Brisbane Festival's Art Boat programme that offers a celestial floating art experience featuring the work of internationally renowned, local visual artist Lindy Lee titled 'The Spheres'.
'The Spheres' takes its cue from Ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras, who speculated that celestial bodies caused vibrations as they coursed majestically through the heavens. Pythagoras termed this the 'Music of the Spheres'.
"'The Spheres' is a celebration of harmony and joy, a symphony of connection and inclusiveness that will entangle Brisbane's community and breathe life into its sails," Lindy says.
Art Boat features the city's most unique on-water bar and performance programme featuring the likes of Alice Ivy, Franky Smart, Beckah Amani, Moreton, Hannah Macklin, Jerome Farah, Pink Matter, Australasian Dance Collective, Camerata – Queensland's Chamber Orchestra, Mo'Ju, The Huxleys and much more.
"MZAZA means crazy in Morocco, the part of the world vocalist Pauline's father grew up in, and sometimes our band really does attract the crazy so. . . today, we're sharing our top 5 craziest memories."
1: Mankini
Does anything compare to spotting a man strolling through a landlocked Czech village in a fluro green mankini and an umbrella hat? You tell us (Pauline's face in the photo says it all).
2: No sleep till Dresden
Back in 2016 we had a very surreal night in Geneva. We were driving from Paris and had planned to play a gig in a bar called La Bretelle on our way to perform at a festival in Germany.We planned an early show to try to get a decent sleep before the 14-hour drive to Dresden, but it was not to be. The audience was so hyped (and awesome) and the place was so packed that we literally couldn't get off the stage, so we just played encore after encore, exhausting our originals repertoire and reverting to popular songs in French while people sang along like a bunch of drunken sailors.
But it didn't end there, we finally got back to our local host's place – a dream muso cave with instruments – and he was still up, frantically playing drums to blaring records and insisting we play and dance till dawn. Not much sleep was had.
3: Violent Strings
One of the craziest supports we ever did was for the Violent Femmes. Pauline mashed some iconic lines from Femmes' 'Kiss Off' into 'Poinçonneur Des Lilas', one of our Serge Gainsborough numbers.Then during their set Gordan Gano asked MZAZA's fiddler, Greta, to join them for mental wigout track 'Black Girls'. Needless to say she broke a string shredding.
4: Linz Lederhosen
One of the biggest busking festivals in the world, Pflasterspektakel in Linz, Austria, was nuts but fun to play. Most of the city was closed to traffic so MZAZA's tour van was a shopping trolley (interesting on cobblestones).We had a hectic schedule, playing three times a day! The payoff was some awesome new fans and spotting lots of spunky lederhosen action. On the last night it started raining and we packed ourselves and our audience into a tiny bar for some raucous fun which ended up with us being offered a gig in Vienna two days later.
5: I'm on a boat
One of the most mind-blowing memories of one of our tours is playing on an art boat on the river in Prague, with the amazing city skyline lit up in colours by the sunset – we had to pinch ourselves more than once during that gig at the wonder of playing with one of Europe's most stunning cities right before our eyes.To top it off the support band was a group made up of Greta's good friends (and brilliant musos) from when she lived in Czech Republic in the '90s, including songwriter Martin Vejvoda who wrote a song with us for our recent album 'The Birth & Death Of Stars'.
"Speaking of Art Boats we'll be playing on Brisbane's very own for Brisbane Festival on 18 September."
