As Maysa celebrates her twentieth year in the music business, she continues with the same goals of using music to heal, celebrate and love. After starting her career as a member of Stevie Wonder’s vocalist ensemble, she was awarded a gift from Stevie as he penned “Have Sweet Dreams” for her latest project ‘Motions of Love.’ On her new album, she treks outside the soul and jazz style she is known for as a lead singer for Incognito and Stevie Wonder’s Wonderlove.
We spoke with Maysa about remaining heartbroken, symbols of a lady and staying when the love is gone.
Stevie Wonder’s Present… My best friend Kim [Brewer] and I started off singing background for Stevie [Wonder]. We were talking about my twentieth anniversary and she said to me she had written a song and she wanted to submit it for my album and Steven was going [to be] producing it. I lost it! It came out of nowhere. It is a beautiful gift for my twentieth anniversary. We got to the studio to do her song and Stevie started writing [Have Sweet Dreams]. It was so pretty. It was great.
Remaining in Heartbreak… There are [ways] a loving relationship should go; it is not just a friendship. I’m looking for that fantasy special love and I think when I get there I am going to write about it a lot. Right now, where I am in life is I have just been through a lot. I haven’t met the person I am going to spend the rest of my life with; I don’t think. Not yet anyway.
Love Ain’t Easy… I don’t think people try hard enough anymore. I think they figure there are so many people out here, why try to get one person when you can get anybody. A lot of people feel that way…There is a lot of selfishness. [It’s] all about what the person wants and if the other person can’t meet the criteria then they say “ok I’ll go to the next one.” The grass is not always greener but people find that out later. It is a big mess. People are under stress financially, losing their job and can’t keep their house. There are a lot of things breaking people apart right now that if things were a little better, people would try harder maybe. Right now people have no tolerance.
TV Numbing Feelings… Realty TV shuts off certain thing in us where we don’t feel anything anymore. That is the danger of the MTV world where people don’t listen to real music. It is all about who is having sex and tongue kissing who and all that stuff. That is the simulation people get; it is not about listening to the lyrics, listening to the words, listening to the music and how it matches the lyrics and how the singer relays the song to you…Music has to return what it is here for; it is here to heal, celebrate, it’s here to do whatever you want to.
Making A Symbol For Being a Lady… A “Flower Girl” is a woman that is so special to a man that he wants to bring her flowers. That connection of being a flower girl and the symbolism of a flower; a flower is beautiful, it is vibrant. That is what women are. I want young girls to come out and be ladies again…Girls were not being ladies anymore and that was scaring me. Especial my younger sisters, I want them to understand nobody’s ambition is to grow up and be a basketball wife. That should not be the focus of this life. I understand pop culture, I was a teenager, I was a young girl once too. My mother instilled in me to always be a lady no matter what and nobody can say anything about you. Nobody can take anything from you; just stay a lady.
[Flower girl] is about encouraging a man to be good to them because they are special. That is what “Flower Girl” is all about.
Most Positive Thing On Earth…When a man is in love that is one of the most precious things to me. A man that is in love is beautiful. When a man see that woman he wants and that’s the one he chooses and he feels that good about her and she makes him feel good inside that is one of the most positive and beautiful things on earth.
Motions of Love… When you get to the stage of the relationship when one person does not love the same anymore and they are there just to be there. They are just going through the motions they are not really into it. You have no energy for it; you have no excitement or passion. The passion is gone but you are going through the motions of love. That is a hard thing to deal with for the person that is still in love because you still want to give that energy and passion. You cannot give 100% of the time and not get anything back to replenish.
—— By: Interview By AO
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