Date: September 12, 2013
Venue: Tree House
Time: 8.30-11 pm
Entry: Free
Bio
Maia represents another amazing side to Kenya’s dynamic musical scene. Her voice and style has an affinity with female jazz vocalists of the 1930s and soul and folk music of the 1960s. In all her compositions, Maia is blazing new trails in Kenya; experimenting with different styles, and creating a hybrid sound that is her very own.
Whether busking on street corners while backpacking around the world, or jamming with friends at university in Melbourne, Maia’s sound has developed from playing with musical talents from around the world, injecting her own personality, background and culture into her sound.
Her first single, Altered Light, was the result of collaboration with a funk bass player in Melbourne. Since then, Maia traveled to Berlin and continued writing, singing and collaborating before coming home to Kenya and continuing her work with artists, friends and producers. Drift, Maia’s first album, is a culmination of her travels, her meetings, her collaborations and her experiences; a global cross-pollinated vibe. Maia weaves her adventures, stories and memories with the help of young guitarist Kato Change, producing jazzy riffs with folk licks to soulful percussive dub, to produce a unique addition to Kenya’s music scene.
In Kenya, Maia has performed for numerous awareness campaigns including the Korogocho Slum Campaign and a UN (youth) campaign on awareness in Mathare and Kibera slums, raising money for various schools in those areas. Maia has also composed jingles for various advertisements in Kenya and Berlin and music composition for a South African/Canadian theatre production, Crossroads, that raises awareness in Africa on issues of rape, gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS (www.cmfd.org).
Her latest composition “Uko Wapi?” was featured in the much-acclaimed Kenyan production, “From a Whisper”, depicting events of the 1998 bombing in Kenya.
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