Maya Simone
Maya Simone is a poet and musician affectionately named after Maya Angelou and Nina Simone by her birth parents. Her feet are anchored by earth, her head is connected to spirit, and her music lives in between. Her spoken word and poetry is accompanied often by free improvisation, allowing the listener a direct channel to what is on her heart. Maya Simone’s words draw from the natural world through themes in her work or by the nature of sounds itself.
Photography by Ui-Seng François
Who I Am/Who’s AYAM
Maya is a transdisciplinary artist-scholar from the D.C. Metropolitan Maryland area. When she isn’t in school, she splits her time between freelancing and developing her artist project AYAM.
AYAM is the artist project of Maya and it contains all of her musical identities: Maya Giles, Maya Simone, Maya X, and Maestra Chameleon. Long pulled between her love of Euro-classical music and contemporary music, Maya hopes that her musical expression will create a meet in the middle space for the two worlds to coexist and cross pollinate both respective listening audiences.