If the voice is the mirror to the soul, you can find melancholy and sunshine, strength and softness in Singer-songwriter Joe Bel’s velvet tones. Born into a cosmopolitan family, Joe grew up nurtured by trips abroad. Travelling from her birthplace in the French Alps to the Mediterranean Sea - sailing its blue waters with her sea-faring parents for almost a year – she also got to explore the East Coast of the USA where some of her family members had settled as Greek and Turkish immigrants several generations ago.
A desire to explore new horizons mingled with her passion for music from her early childhood: they had a piano at the house and the albums of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Otis Redding played continuously on the turntable, so did the traditional Judeo-Spanish songs dear to the family.
Self-taught and instinctive, Joe’s career began when she first performed on stage solo with her acoustic guitar in 2012, in the year following the birth of her first child. One life-changing event would lead to another: a few months later, Asaf Avidan discovered her mesmerizing soul-filled folk music and invited her to join his European tour as his support act, all the way to a performance at the Olympia in Paris! Joe then released her Hit the Roads EP in 2015, which enjoyed raving reviews and bagged her a European tour with gigs in Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Norway and the continent's biggest festival in Budapest (Sziget Festival), and even ending up in Tokyo, Japan in 2016. The album was a hit and led to further successes. The title track "Hit the Roads" was selected as the soundtrack to an ad campaign for the Longchamp luxury brand featuring Alexa Chung and directed by Peter Lindbergh. Hitting the big screen, Joe also played the role of an up-and-coming singer alongside Manu Payet in the film "Tout pour être Heureux"; its soundtrack featured several of her songs and soared to number one in French soundtrack sales.
When the time came to record her very first album, Joe made a beeline for Canada, destination Montreal - a city steeped in both French chanson and North American folk -where she was welcomed by music producer Marcus Paquin (Arcade Fire and The National).
Since her album Dreams was released in 2018, the Singer-songwriter has performed more than fifty concerts in Quebec. Fast-forward several years and Joe’s intimate, heart-felt songs continue to spread their sunshine and win over new audiences, racking up over 35 million plays and reaching ten times more listeners today than when the album was first released.
In 2020, when Joe was expecting her second child, she began composing her second opus, Family Tree, driven by a desire to explore her multiple origins, combining folk, catchy melodies and Mediterranean colors. Continuing to lull us with her dreamy organic sound, she has chosen to reveal a little more of herself, singing in English and French, but also in Ladino, the ancient Spanish spoken by her grandfather, music that has been passed down between generations.
Following the birth of their child, she recorded and arranged her new songs with husband Julien Jussey, producer and pianist at the Ciergerie studio in Lyon, a quirky and inviting place where touring musicians like to stop by to record and film their latest tracks (Archive, Other Lives, Altin Gun, Bathazar, Bertrand Belin).
