Artist Spotlight: Michelle Rounds
31 January 2026|RED AMBER – Artist Spotlight
Voice, Freedom, and the Art of Crossing Worlds
Michelle Rounds has never followed a straight line. Her voice moves fluidly between soul, jazz, scat, Pacific melodies, Portuguese phrasing, Japanese collaborations, and the soundscapes of Cairo. Her life, like her music, has unfolded across continents rather than within scenes, shaped by family, migration, curiosity, and an instinctive trust in music as a lifelong calling rather than a career strategy.
Born in Australia, raised in Fiji, and now based in Egypt, Michelle occupies a rare artistic position: an internationally active jazz and soul singer who has built a deep, respected career almost entirely outside the traditional centres of the global jazz industry. A singer, songwriter, collaborator, mentor, and teacher, she is especially known for her fearless scat singing and her openness to language, sound, and culture as living, evolving forces rather than fixed traditions.
To encounter Michelle Rounds is to encounter a philosophy of music that resists categorisation.
“I have always done my music, my thing, my style,” she says simply. “Then you hope someone will enjoy it.”
Music as Inheritance, Not Ambition
Music was never optional in her world. It was assumed.
She comes from a large, multi-generational family of professional musicians, where singing was less a dream to pursue than a language to inherit. Her earliest influence was her father, an architect by trade but a musician by instinct, who filled the home with jazz and classic songwriting. Nat King Cole, Julie London, Joni Mitchell, and Gordon Lightfoot were constant presences, offering not just melodies, but emotional intelligence: songs that breathed, phrased, and lingered.
Radio and television later expanded her musical world, offering contrast and discovery. Watching musicians perform left a lasting impression. That interplay between depth at home and exposure to the wider world would become one of her defining artistic tools.
Finding Freedom Between Cultures
At the age of 11, Michelle moved from Australia to Fiji. The transition was abrupt and formative.
“Moving to Fiji when I was 11 was a culture shock,” she recalls.
At school, she learned a simple Fijian meke song for a class performance. She didn’t understand the language, and discovered that it didn’t matter.
“I loved singing in a language I didn’t understand. I think that was the start.”
That joy, the emotional power of sound before meaning, became central to her creative philosophy. For Michelle, music does not require translation to resonate. Identity, she learned early on, can shift form without losing truth.
Portuguese entered her repertoire through the songs of Jobim; Japanese followed through collaboration. Arabic, interestingly, did not, despite her long residence in Egypt, yet Arabic music would deeply shape how she listens, phrases, and breathes on stage.
Genre Before Geography
However, Michelle resists romantic notions of cultural influence. Her sound, she explains, has been shaped more by genre than by place.
Rooted primarily in soul and R&B, jazz entered through family and listening, pop through radio, and opera later emerged as a passion, surprising audiences when she performed O Mio Babbino Caro in Auckland. What unites these forms is emotional directness. Whether through scat improvisation or operatic drama, she gravitates toward music that demands vulnerability.
The Voice as Instrument
Scat singing sits at the heart of Michelle Rounds’ artistic identity. It emerged organically rather than through formal training, allowing her to communicate directly with musicians and reshape musical structures in real time.
Fellow musicians often describe her approach as fearless. For her, scat is not decorative, it is instinctive language, sound as thought, breath as narrative. It is less about virtuosity and more about presence, connection, and listening.
Cairo and the Art of Listening
Since 2009, Cairo has become a creative home. Her interest in Arabic music began earlier with the voices of Abdel Halim Hafez and Fairuz and deepened into a passion for old-school shaabi and Sufi traditions.
Though she does not sing in Arabic, she listens deeply. That listening shapes how she phrases, breathes, inhabits the stage, and how she collaborates with musicians across the region.
Performing as Dialogue
For her, performance is dialogue rather than declaration. Cultural context shapes how she moves, speaks, and connects. Each audience brings its own energy, and she meets them where they are, without losing herself.
Certain moments linger: a performance in Japan in the grounds of a samurai castle, where she created animal sounds rather than singing lyrics; big band and orchestral collaborations in Egypt, dreams come true for a jazz singer. Gratitude, not entitlement, underpins every scale of performance.
Language, Limits, and Quiet Defiance
Michelle rarely chooses language based on ideology. More often, she is invited into projects with parameters already set. Yet some choices carry unexpected weight.
Her cover of a Tongan song originally recorded in the 1970s, but banned upon release, was also censored decades later.
“Some things take time to change,” she observes.
Rather than activism, her role is one of transmission, revealing how music inevitably intersects with power, tradition, and change.
Freedom, Teaching, and Continuity
Collaboration and teaching remain central to her life. Guided by instinct, she recognises potential immediately and finds deep joy in how students and collaborators reinterpret music in ways that excel beyond the original songs they choose to perform.
Working largely outside jazz centres has offered something invaluable: freedom. Freedom to experiment, mentor, and define success on her own terms.
Grounded by gratitude for her husband, family, and fellow musicians, Michelle Rounds continues to move through the world guided by sound rather than maps.
She does not seek to change the world through music. She offers encouragement, openness, and truth.
“I can guide you,” she says, “but only you can change your life.”
In that philosophy lies her quiet power, a voice that crosses borders not by force, but by invitation.
Selected Releases
Draw Blood (Cassette 1994 – digitally released 2013)
Award-winning early release that established Michelle Rounds as a distinctive voice in Pacific and jazz-influenced music. The album earned her the Vakalutuivoce Award for Best Album and Best Female Artist in Fiji.
Let Me See Now (2005)
A genre-blending album showcasing her strengths as a scat singer and collaborator, including work with the Japanese band Steal & Shorty. The record reflects her growing international outlook and experimental approach.
Time & Space feat. Lil Garhy (2013)
From Michelle Rounds and Her Amazing Friends. Recorded in Egypt, this release reflects Michelle’s deep engagement with cross-cultural dialogue, improvisation, and contemporary global jazz expression.
For updates, music, and upcoming performances, follow Michelle Rounds on Linktree
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