Aza Roots

Aza Roots - Aza Roots
Debut album out Aug 24, 2025
Taiwan × Japan × Brazil. A new sound takes flight--rooted in tradition, blooming in the now.

-- Grow Deep, Fly High.

Aza Roots is a genre-blending trio rooted in personal heritage and shared imagination. Their debut album Aza Roots (Aug 24, 2025) fuses folk traditions, Brazilian rhythms, Japanese poetics, and improvisation--shaped by Tokyo's multicultural pulse where the trio first met.

The members come from diverse cultural landscapes: Eri Liao, a Taiwanese-Japanese vocalist of Atayal Indigenous descent; Marcelo Kimura, a guitarist from São Paulo, Brazil; and Falcon, a Japanese guitarist and composer known for his layered, lyrical soundscapes. Together, they create a bold, contemporary sound that transcends borders.

-- Reviving Language Through Song: Águas de Março in Skikun Atayal

The album opens with a unique reimagining of Jobim's Águas de Março, sung in Skikun Atayal--an endangered variant of the Atayal language spoken in the mountains of northeastern Taiwan. With Kimura's subtle arrangement, Eri's intimate vocals, and Falcon's atmospheric textures, the song becomes familiar yet strikingly new.

Parts of the lyrics echo the original Portuguese, but most were co-created with Eri's mother and Skikun elders--merging translation with reinterpretation, grounded in Indigenous views of nature, time, and spirit. The result is a poetic revival of language and memory, and a reconnection to ancestral voice through contemporary music.

-- Seven Songs, One Shared Vision

From the trilingual grooves of Marko and Retratos to the reimagined Noto Mugiyabushi, a folk song from Japan's Noto Peninsula, each track explores "expanded roots": not fixed to one culture, but branching from many.

Other highlights include ZABUMBANGER, a percussive guitar piece bursting with layered rhythm and voice, and Taragay Piaoliang (LIVE)--a high-energy performance that echoes Taiwan's layered history, shaped by Indigenous roots, Japanese rule, and hybrid modernity.

Rather than returning to tradition, Aza Roots carves out a new kind of folklore--alive in the present.

-- Aza Means "Wings"

In Portuguese, Aza means "wings--a fitting name for music grounded yet free.
Grow Deep, Fly High.
This debut marks the beginning of Aza Roots' soaring journey.