Artist Profile: Maiya Blaney
Maiya Blaney, the experimental singer and producer from New Jersey, has been developing her craft since she discovered her calling as a teenager, but, with her new album A Room With A Door That Closes, she has leaned fully into to her blazing rock-and-roll and alternative roots, crafting a masterpiece of an album that represents her first step into a confident and boundary-pushing sound.
As a child, Blaney grew up surrounded by music. Her mother is a pianist, and Blaney would sit beside her as she played through various jazz and classical standards and showed her daughter the intricacies of the compositions. Her father, meanwhile, was a huge jazz head, and, because of him, visionaries such as Wynton Marsalis and John Coltrane constantly graced the sounds of their home.
As Blaney matured, she constantly wrote and sang. However, as a teenager, when she attempted to write her first song using a free DAW, she was left deeply unsatisfied with the result and vowed never to write a song again.
Yet, when she went to college in New York, she discovered a group of artists, mostly rappers and R&B singers, who invited her to attend their collaborative studio sessions. It was in this environment where Blaney first learned that she was capable of participating in the music-making process, and it was through these experiences that her passion for music arose yet again.
“Obviously a lot of old school hip-hop, which is what I was primarily listening to and being influenced by, was very influenced by jazz, and so that was so easy for me. I would be listening to [a song] and I would hear a sample and be like, ‘Oh, I know this song’... And just how infused hip-hop is with neo soul, with R&B, with jazz; you cannot have one without the others.That made it so seamless for me, because I was raised on jazz music, I was raised on soul music.”
Her first album, 3, spawned from these early days of her sonic explorations. Across 12 tracks, Blaney spun a number of neo-soul inspired, hip-hop and R&B-rooted movements that served to showcase her supreme vocal talent.
Yet, despite the excitement she found in her ability to create a cohesive album, Blaney was still left unsatisfied. As a teenager, she had also developed a strong taste for rock and alternative music, born primarily out of her lack of exposure to it as a child.
“I would be singing these very neo-soul melodies with this underground hip-hop instrumentation and then would go home and be listening to this band, Forth Wanderers, from my town. I didn’t want that to go to waste, I didn't want to feel like I had to be so one-dimensional when I'm not. My music taste and sensibility goes all over the map, so it wouldn't make sense to try to be this neo-soul princess when that could not be farther from my truth.”
So, Blaney set to work equipping herself with the tools that would allow her to execute the sound she envisioned. She learned to play guitar and produce, and, as she set out to make A Room With A Door That Closes, she knew that she needed to be involved in every part of the process from start to finish.
What resulted was an enamoring project: one that maintained aspects of the captivating vocals found on 3 while interweaving the crushing guitar rhythms and experimental breakbeats of the genres she had grown to love.
Now, having discovered her sound, Blaney looks to continue to innovate, feeling freed by the infinite sonic possibilities that stand in front of her.
“I think that I have the blessing of being, to some degree, misunderstood. Not by everybody, but by some people. And, as much as that can lead me to feel externally dysphoric… I think, as an artist, it's a very exciting place to be because it means there's room for my actual authenticity to live. If nobody's telling me what I have to be, then I actually just get to be myself.”
