01-05-2025
Winston-Salem woman finds her way with music
(WGHP) — Ask almost any successful musician, and they have a story of struggling to break through.
A generation ago, record companies scoured the country looking for talent to introduce to their vast audiences. Now, the record companies sit back and tell artists, 'Build an audience and bring it to us, and then we'll see what we can do.'
'Of course it's frustrating,' said Maia Kamil, who grew up in New Jersey but moved to Greensboro to experience the North Carolina Folk Festival at the urging of legendary guitarist Charlie Hunter, who lives in Greensboro. 'It's not what I want to just be, writing my music and just performing it and focusing on the art, but it is what it is. Every generation of artists has their battles that they have to do what they have to do. It's like running a business.'
Maia's journey began as she entered her teens.
'My grandmother bought me a guitar, and then I taught myself on YouTube how to play,' Maia said.
She got good relatively fast.
'I was kind of known as the girl that can sing in college,' Maia said. 'I sang background for rappers, and then when I moved here, I was always like the featured singer.'
Maia got good enough that her friends thought NPR's Tiny Desk concert series was something she should enter.
'All of my friends were like, 'Maia, why don't you do this?' And every year I … missed the deadline, so I was just like, 'OK. Let me do it,' Maia said. 'It literally was the last day to do it, so I texted my friends who all live on the block and I asked them if they could come over.'
They did and recorded the song 'Good Life.'
'We wrote it on a summer night,' Maia said. 'We knew that we wanted to write a song from the perspective of the Earth to humanity … It really flowed out of us very quickly.'
NPR chose that song as one of just 50 among the 7,500 entries for the fan favorite vote.
Maia's influences, as you might imagine, are varied.
'I love James Taylor so much, but it always changes for me who I'm being influenced by. I loved Nina Simone as a kid. She's amazing,' said Maia of the North Carolina-born R&B and blues legend who died in 2003.
Hear Maia perform with collaborators Noah and Tori Elliott in this edition of The Buckley Report.
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