MAYA

Maya grew up in the ever-expanding capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. Her life revolves around her love for tinkering with anything that makes notes and melodies. She has played the guitar for over 20 years with friends and musicians from USA to Slovakia to Japan.

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"I grew up in a modest urban landscape, albeit with little resources available. I would look at my friends who play the piano, arguing whose music centre is better while I itched to learn how pressing each key would sound like. I dared not to ask my parents for piano or a lesson. I was always worried that my parents never had enough. When I was a teenager, I asked for an acoustic guitar which they could afford - it was less than $100 but I was the happiest because for the first time I can feel what notes mean, what they'd sound like, how to work with them. It meant the world to me."

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Maya continues learning, playing and performing her music when opportunities arise. In the thick of Covid-19, she was awarded the prestigious Chevening Scholarship by the  British Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and completed her MSc in Gender and International Relations at the University of Bristol. She currently resides in the green town of Guildford, UK while working on her PhD.​

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Maya loves the smell of the tropical rain.