Zulya & The Children Of The Underground + Mzaza

Don’t miss a fantastic double header show featuring two leading bands showcasing Australian world music! Melbourne’s very own Zulya and the Children of the Underground, alongside Brisbane-based world music darlings, Mzaza, fronted by Pauline Maudy, return to Melbourne to launch their highly-anticipated album, ‘Ghosts’. ARIA award-winning Zulya and The Children of the Underground is by far one of the most intriguing and unique acts in Australia, and perhaps the world. They perform exquisite original music loosely inspired by Zulya’s Tatar and Russian roots. Zulya’s music defies being labelled, but has been described as “Kurt Weillish, Euro-Cabaret jazz [colliding with] lullabies constructed to tear your heart out.” Come see why this group won an ARIA and continues to enchant listeners around the world!

In 2004, Zulya and The Children of the Underground took Australian audiences by storm, re-configuring the way world and folk music is perceived by the release of their first album, The Waltz of Emptiness (and Other Songs on Russian Themes).

ARIA award-winning Zulya and The Children of the Underground is by far one of the most intriguing and unique acts in Australia, and perhaps the world. They perform exquisite original music loosely inspired by Zulya’s Tatar and Russian roots. Zulya’s music defies being labeled, but has been described as “Kurt Weillish, Euro-Cabaret jazz [colliding with] lullabies constructed to tear your heart out.”

Nearly ten years after their formation the ensemble is placed firmly at the crossroad of restlessness and the sublime. The result; a transformative concert music that is haunting and nuanced. Their most recent album, Tales of Subliming, is a rich tribute to the group’s continued search for the elusive connection between ensemble, composition, and performance.

“Swinging like a Bolshevik Marlene Dietrich, Zulya and her Underground friends are able to strike a deft balance between melancholic sadness and the unbridled joy that’s never too far away”. SONGLINES, UK

Zulya and the Children of the Underground weave a unique blend of cinematic chanson that features music from their last three albums. Come see why this group won an ARIA and continues to enchant listeners around the world.

Exploring themes of migrations and the spirits of ancestors left behind, Mzaza’s new album Ghosts is inspired by the stories of band members’ families, and of people around the world whose families once migrated, voluntarily or not.

Influenced by Singer Pauline Maudy’s French and Spanish Sephardic roots – buoyed by her French, Spanish, Ladino and Turkish vocals – Mzaza’s writers and musicians skilfully create their own set of traditions from a tapestry of richly woven influences from France, the Balkans, the Middle East and Sephardic Spain. Stories throughout the record touch on traces of Maudy’s ancestors’ lives in Algeria, Morocco, Spain and France; also finding inspiration in the the story of percussionist Jordan’s family who were victims of the social cleansing and population exchange in Turkey in the 1920s.

Ultimately, through the tales of persecution and trial, a joy of freedom and celebration for life has pervaded the music of Mzaza.

The impressive musicianship of Mzaza – deftly realised with accordion, violin, percussion, double bass and Flamenco guitar – embraces diversity, the old and the new, the familiar and the foreign, through timeless melodies.