Brisbane-based Mzaza sing in French and English but their music is as exotic as their family backgrounds, pulsing with Balkan and other Eastern rhythms. They say there’s “fire in my blood’’ in one of their tunes and that’s in the music too. Vocalist Pauline Maudy is of French and Jewish Sephardic descent, a people who escaped the Spanish Inquisition via Morocco. Enfant Du Chemin (Children of the Road), winner of best world music song at last month’s Queensland Music Awards, is derived from traditional Macedonian roots, opening with Maudy’s Gallic vocals and featuring a mix of violin and accordion. The stories are timeless: in Sous La Lune, village women wonder if their men will return from the sea; in Nighwatch a “sans-papier’’ couple hide from police; Love On TV compares real love with the fiction kind. There is a cover of Serge Gainsbourg’s Dying to Dance With The Devil too, but the originals are its equal. Ghosts? There are plenty here in a world where the past is ever-present and music knows no borders.

Noel Mengel