WAKA
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About
Waka is a jazz singer from the most unlikely of backgrounds. She was born in the heart of the city of Tokyo, growing up in a typical tiny city-apartment, without any music around her but the deepest silence.
Since her childhood, she promptly did whatever her curiosity took her; taking magic lessons, practicing Kendo, going to dancing schools. When she turned 16 years old, she made a decision to leave Tokyo for a while and live somewhere else. She got enrolled to a local high school in the middle of cotton fields in the state of Mississippi, the U.S., where she had her destined encounters of her life, Philosophy and Jazz.
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Photos
As soon as she came back to Tokyo, she started her BA study in Philosophy, which she graduated with her thesis about “Creative intuition in practice of improvisational music”. Spending her days philosophizing about Jazz music in her vintage clothing, and her nights singing in Karaoke box on her way home, it came naturally for Waka to start singing Jazz.
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Videos
The girl, straight out of Tokyo and Mississippi, moved to the Netherlands to study Jazz Voice. Since her relocation to the NL, she has been involved in multiple projects of hers such as HBB, WAKA4tet, JAZAMBEI and Waka & Tiago.
WAKA4TET At JZ brat Sound of Tokyo
HBB music video 'Ela é Carioca'
SUS2 at TivoliVredenburg
WAKA4TET At Morrow's
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Contact
With her uniquely captivating voice that is organic and warm, she enchanted her audience with Jazz classics like ‘East Of The Sun’, but also with a powerful Samba like Elis Regina’s ‘Menino das Laranjas’, and her own arrangement of all time Bossa Nova favorite ‘Dindi'. She has sung in numerous festivals such as Utrecht Jazz festival, Jazz on the Sofa Festival, Middelheim Jazz festival, North Sea Jazz festival, Sapporo City Jazz Festival, and venues like TivoliVredenburg and JZ Brat SOUND OF TOKYO.
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