Bio
“I am grateful to the Creator that I can be the child of two cultures that are far apart. Perhaps this is exactly why bridging people and groups, and eliminating divides, preoccupies me on an elemental level. Music and folk songs have handed me the key to myself and others since early childhood. Through them, I connect to the vast current of cultures compressing centuries and millennia, and the gap between us seems to narrow. Every form of creation engages me, which is why I consciously started moving towards my own lyrics and melodies alongside folk songs (Metamorphosis album, 2020). During 20 years of singing folk songs, I have let countless folk music motifs and forms pass through me, which in the present sometimes take authentic form, and sometimes find a home in the musical fabric of my own songs.”
Guessous Majda Mária “Mesi” is a Hungarian-Moroccan folk singer and songwriter with five albums. In 2011, her work was recognized with the Junior Prima Award. She is a TEDx speaker (2017), an artist-teacher of the MUS-E program, and was a visiting teacher at the Liszt Academy of Music for 7 years. Born in Debrecen, the artist was surrounded by Hungarian folk songs and the Arab musical world as her natural environment in her childhood. Later, this duality formed the basis of her creative work, musical thinking, and openness to musical traditions beyond Hungarian folk music. Her musical world is unique; folk music and lyrical contents of different cultures intertwine in her song compilations. Béla Bartók’s ideal of the “brotherhood of peoples” is particularly important to her, and she sincerely conveys this ideology through her music.
She gave her first solo concert at the age of 18 in her hometown, Debrecen, where the worlds of jazz, musicals, and popular music were represented alongside folk songs. Following this, she was admitted to the historic first class of the Folk Music Department of the Liszt Academy of Music, where she graduated in 2012 as a folk singing performer and teacher. She owes much to her masters both in Hungary and abroad (without claiming completeness), such as: Abderrahim Amrani, Tamás Kobzos Kiss, Mansur Bildik, Mercan Erzincan, Judit Sáriné Szebenyi, Dr. János Sipos, Anna Vakler.
She regularly gives concerts in various parts of the world, from Asian countries to the United States. She is a contributing singer on numerous folk music, world music, and jazz albums.
She also approaches social problems with social sensitivity. Her album “Átváltozás” (Metamorphosis, Tom-Tom Records) is the result of an innovative artistic-social initiative, which puts the destiny of disadvantaged people into song in the light of positive change. She also had the opportunity to present this project as the closing speaker of the TEDxYouth@Budapest conference.