Mayaeni will bring her HEART (Hear Art) project to the Berkley Front on July 7. The event combines art and music, and more information can be found here.
The night will also feature local Detroit singer/songwriter Pato Margetic and artist Alphonso Cox will be doing a live painting at the show. It's $5 dollars at the door and the festivities will kick off at 9pm.
It should be a triumphant return to the area for Mayaeni. The 24-year-old singer-songwriter, born and raised in Detroit to a West African mother and a Jewish father (the latter formerly a guitar player with Jimmy Ruffin and others), found herself dancing to hip hop in London in her teens, then moving to New York by herself at 17, where she still resides. In between, she travelled and worked in places as exotic as Sierra Leone and Japan. But Detroit snatched her heart long ago.
"I'm still very proud when I tell people I'm from here," she told us in 2010. "Some people look startled by the notion. Others don't know anything about Detroit other that what they learned in the 8 Mile movie. It's nice to give people from out of town a positive view of Detroit. My brother, D. Allie, still plays hip hop here, so I have connections that are very much alive. I miss my family when I'm not here, and the luxury that comes with living at home again. I tend to move from place to place in New York, picking up people's leases for a couple of months at a time when they're ready to move out. It works, but I miss having a home of my own."
Welcome home.
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