Sauvageoness (Switzerland) / Maya McNeil

Maya McNeil Maya McNeil was born in Oakland, California and grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota from the age of four to fourteen. Returning to the golden state, McNeil began songwriting in earnest at 18, when their musical grandmother Joanne Burress, gave Maya their classical guitar. This list of musical influences goes far, deep and wide, and started with Joni Mitchell’s album ‘Blue,’ as Maya’s mom Rebecca would put headphones on her pregnant belly and play this great album. Through and through, whatever genre of sound they venture through to express a story or opinion, Maya identifies as a queer folk musician, and strives to uphold and honor the sound of people’s history of love, suffering, fight, grief, joy, and liberation as it is told through music. Folk music, as well as most music in the ‘United States,’ is at its core inspired and shaped by Black/African American music, and the immigrant and diasporic music of those who occupy much of this land today, and is due that acknowledgement in spades. McNeil strives to make music that heals and shakes up the sludge for seeing the past clearly and how it lives today, in what longs to transform, abolish, heal and shape into a better and beautiful future.