We Caught Up With R&B Singer Mya 2023 to Chat Hair and Philanthropy

“The leisure [industry] usually requires you to indicate up as a personality.”

“There’s nonetheless a stigma across the subject of AIDS,” says R&B singer Mya over the cellphone. “It’s finest to guide with love but in addition data, consciousness, schooling and group to be able to obtain breakthroughs.” The Grammy Award-winning singer, who has been a long-time advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and the combat in opposition to AIDS, shall be performing on the Bloor Street Entertains after-party on the 4 Seasons Resort Toronto, in help of the Canadian Basis for AIDS Analysis, later this week.

When Mya dials in, she’s one week away from her Toronto present and is asking from Germany, the place she’s set to hit the stage earlier than making her option to Canada. This yr, the “Case Of The Ex (Whatcha Gonna Do)” singer celebrates 25 years within the music business, and to commemorate the milestone, she launched deluxe editions of each her Mya and Moodring albums.

When Mya’s eponymous debut album dropped in 1998, the younger artist appeared on the album cowl sporting a true-to-the-’90s brown lip, with a cascade of curls peaking out beneath a brown bucket hat. Once I ask if she’d all the time embraced her curls, she tells me her hair was as soon as a supply of insecurity, as she was usually teased about her “totally different” curly texture.

“I labored so laborious to attempt to determine what merchandise to make use of to ‘tame’ my hair as a result of it was thought-about, on the time, unruly,” she explains. Because the budding musician discovered a house within the arts, she says she felt “uplifted” about who she was and the way her hair appeared. “I finally embraced my hair in my later teen years, after I was round more healthy environments by way of the humanities. We weren’t centered on vainness and exterior however extra so a standard objective,” Mya explains. “Being round wholesome, positive-minded people that aren’t centered on vainness normally comes with much less insecurity and ignorance.”

As of late, Mya makes use of her hair as a type of self-expression. “Hair speaks volumes. Actually,” she laughs. “As an entertainer, I’m conveying artwork, and artwork is spoken in so many various methods and mediums, from color palettes to hairstyles.”

“The leisure [industry] usually requires you to indicate up as a personality that you could be not all the time be in your private life,” says Mya. One in every of her favorite appears to be like to sport on stage? A traditional ponytail that retains her hair out of her face. From loc and braid ponytails to pure and drawstring ponies in a wide range of hues, lengths, and textures, Mya has mastered the artwork of the efficiency pony. “It’s my go-to, and I don’t essentially want a hairstylist for it. It retains the price range down,” she laughs.

Although of us usually appears to be like to celebrities for hair inspiration, Mya feels that many tendencies sparked by stars over time stem from tradition and reference issues which have lengthy been documented in historical past books and artwork. “Then, we see these appears to be like present up, presumably in a music video, and we take it and make it our personal.”

Because the natural hair motion has progressed, the singer says social media has sparked wholesome hair conversations between ladies around the globe. Mya says with this dialog comes elevated self-awareness. “We typically attempt to obtain an unrealistic, ever-changing normal of magnificence, when actually, the hair that we have been born with is ‘good hair’,” says Mya, who carried out at Frizz Fest — a pure magnificence competition designed to advertise self-love by way of hair — this summer season.

Mya’s considerations with hair well being and general wellness are a pure extension of her dedication to the vegan life-style. She first went vegan in 2014, and launched her personal vegan transition information for followers in 2018. In 2017, she walked the Grammy Awards crimson carpet in head-to-toe, cruelty-free apparel. Within the years since, she has remained vocal about her life-style selections by way of social media.

After 25 years within the highlight, Mya continues to show, by way of a plethora of philanthropic endeavours, that she is far more than only a musician.