Jérémy Ragheb/JATA

A clip one may see flickering past on a phone screen during an infinite scroll:  A curly-haired 20-year-old wanders the streets, galleries and metro stations of Brussels, armed with a giant bamboo instrument. The sounds emanating from the wood wind instrument are warm and dreamy, hard to place, somewhere on the sonic spectrum between an accordion, an organ and a flute.  

Said 20-year-old is Jérémy Ragheb, a Brussels native and ethereal online presence in his own right. His lightweight and thus easily portable instrument is called the khaen and originates from Lao and Thailand.  

A chance encounter with the khaen during an infinite scroll of his own led Jérémy to purchase the mouth organ in a local Thai grocery store and learn it auto-didactically.  

He ended up producing and publishing videos of himself playing the instrument on the very same platform that inspired him to take it up in the first place. The videos of its enchanting sounds have garnered him a reputation online with tens of millions of social media views to date.  

Following his debut EP he is back with a new, off-the-wall and futuristic project, combining the khaen, vocals and jazz fusion with his band JATA.