Minami Kizuki, born on 26 December 1989, is a Japanese popular and Shima-uta folk singer.
Background
She was born in Amami Ōshima, Kagoshima, Japan. Minami Kizuki was born on 26 December 1989 on the island of Amami Ōshima, Kagoshima, Japan. She grew up on the neighbouring island of Tokunoshima, part of the Amami Islands group, until the age of 14, when she moved to the city of Kagoshima on the mainland.
Career
Beginnings
In 2006, a talent scout from the Pony Canyon record label discovered her singing Shima-uta songs in a park in Kagoshima. In 2007, at the age of 18, she made her public debut at the MBC Summer Festival in Kagoshima. The following year, Kagoshima Television aired a short documentary about her debut and career rise.
Foreign the next several years, she released several singles and performed numerous times on radio and television throughout Japan, as well as travelling to New York City in June 2010 to perform at "Japan Day Central Park", a Japanese cultural expo.
Television fame
On 29 July 2014, Kizuki first appeared on THEカラオケ★バトル (THE Karaoke★Battle), a televised karaoke competition shown on television Tokyo. The initial contest was a team event, with teams representing different regions of Japan.
She has become renowned for her pitch and singing technique, called kobushi, in which a single syllable of text is sung while moving between several different notes in succession (this technique being common to her native islands" Shima-uta singing). Outside of karaoke, in 2014 she provided the opening and ending themes to the Korean drama The King"s Doctor, and in December 2014 provided a song for the Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai World programme J-Melo, an English-language programme aimed at exploring Japanese music
On 21 January 2015, her first solo album Sakuranagashi (サクラナガシ) was released, featuring many songs covered on THE Karaoke★Battle.
On 17 June 2015, her second solo cover album, Minamikaze (ミナミカゼ, lit "Southern Wind") was released.