Meet Mahaut Mondino, rising star of hybrid R'n'B

Mahaut Mondino aka Mahaut is not just the daughter of the famous photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino. In just a few years, the velvety-voiced artist has established herself as a magnetic singer-songwriter, capable of crafting visceral, spellbinding pop-R'n'B hits worthy of the genre's great Anglo-Saxon stars.

The first name Mahaut, of Germanic and medieval origin, means "powerful in battle". A fitting name for singer Mahaut Mondino, who has decided to call herself Mahaut. Daughter of the famous fashion photographer and video artist Jean-Baptiste Mondino and Friquette Thévenet, the 31-year-old Parisian has become a singer-songwriter in the same way as she entered religion.
Mahaut Mondino, R'n'B singer with a powerful voice

Passionate about her music, she began writing her first songs and singing when she was a teenager. By the age of 17, she was composing music for commercials, notably for Cacharel, co-writing a song with Mirwais, ex-member of the cult group Taxi Girl and collaborator with Madonna. Film music is traditionally a man's world, but Mahaut, who studied sound engineering, is a warrior. Fiercely independent, she has even decided to self-produce.

It was in 2014 that the world discovered Mahaut, in the magnificent video for her aptly named Voodoo Me. Her powerful voice, with its mix of pop, R'n'B and electro, bewitches to the rhythm of her sensual swaying. Dressed in a black leather mini-skirt and top by Azzedine Alaïa, she undulates hypnotically, inspired by the dancehall queens, the charismatic dancers who set Jamaican ghetto parties alight.

A star is born, badass, eccentric, provocative and unique, and the flattering comparisons abound: Rihanna, Lauryn Hill, FKA twigs... Influenced by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Al Green and Prince, Mahaut invents a world of sound that knows no boundaries.

A fan of syncretism, she flirts as much with dancehall and reggae as she does with Bollywood. And she draws on her travels to the United States, India and the Bahamas. The result is a series of adventurous, eccentric and avant-garde songs - in English - collected on a debut EP entitled Mahaut Mondino, released in 2015. A year later, Summertime followed, an enchanting mix of electronica and blues produced with Eurythmics producer Dave Stewart.

Then Mahaut, who had to overcome her shyness to become a pop star, takes a break. "Crossing deserts and swimming against the current is tiring, but it builds muscle. The artist confesses to having taken some side roads: "I've done a lot of wandering... worked on my head and my body. My musical evolution has been towards something simpler and clearer. A velvet voice in an iron body." [Laughs]

The artist is back with an instant hit, the hedonistic Temper Tantrum, somewhere between "electric soul and melancholic punk". It's a song that invites you to let go, inspired by "a desire to speak out and have fun with the times I live in, hence the title Temper Tantrum".


In the delightful accompanying video, Mahaut - who has just recorded a new, as yet unreleased mini album - dances sensuously, freely, in front of the camera. She explains: "I had in mind a video that was uninhibited and playful, with a white background and no artifice. I wanted to go against the grain of anything that's too elaborate and full of concepts, which could end up being vulgar. In the end, it's perhaps by doing less that you say more...".

https://youtu.be/-IXq8ebouKc?si=87TjIfwdxNdfKruV

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