Like most musicians, Mary Ann Alexander was born into a family that appreciated music and art. She was thoroughly entertained by her grandmother and parents who always engaged in some form of art for fun. Her father was a professional singer and taking frequent trips to the studio was a normal affair. Mary would sit next to the sound engineer and keenly watch the process while her dad sang in the booth. Exploring sounds and life, Mary found her voice in singing R&B, hip hop and jazz tunes. She has a very gentle voice with necessary punches. She smoothly transitions from a soulful songstress in Take My Life With You to a boisterous performer with her rap in In My Zone. More about her below...
FINDING A VOICE
I don’t think our voice is something hidden inside us in order to be found. It keeps changing and adding to itself with experience and influence. Because I consume so much music from these genres it’ll clearly make it’s way into my expression.
THE SENSIBILITY
I feel like every artist’s least favourite thing to do is to try and explain themselves and their style. Their art does the talking. That way, we are also not putting things into defined boxes and limiting expression. So I’d rather play my new track In My Zone for them and bop our heads together.
IN MY ZONE
Honestly, I just wanted to write a fun party song when I was trying to write In my Zone. But being a person who is social yet also likes to sneak out of parties before they end, I was conflicted. The song came from the process of accepting the harmony in that duality.
DISCOVERING PEOPLE AND MUSIC
It’s funny how people discover me through different ways. Over the Ocean was the first song I ever wrote. That’s fifteen-year-old Mary Ann’s voice. I had just picked up a guitar and made something for the first time. The song just happened to get released way later. The director of that film, T.K Rajeev Kumar, heard his daughter, my close friend, play the voice note I sent her from the other room and envisioned it to be in his film Kolambi.
TAKE MY LIFE WITH YOU
Sanjeev T found me through Instagram and reached out to me to work on Take My Life With You. When I figured that he works with Sid Sriram, I told him to convey to Sid that I’m a huge fan and that I love him. So it was a huge surprise for me when Sanjeev told me that he’s getting Sid to be on the track as well. It’s one of my biggest flexes.
As a person who has never traveled much before and is now getting to go to different cities and festivals and having the best time as an artist is honestly magical. Because I was an only child, I always found creativity in isolation but that started to change because of all the musicians with whom I started meeting and making music. Every musician brings out something different in me and it’s always a pleasant surprise
NEXT UP
I’m looking forward to making more music videos and performing at more amazing venues. I also started to spend a lot of time producing my own beats and DJ-ing. So that’s something I see developing this year.
This article is an all exclusive from our March EZ. To read more such articles, follow the link here.
Words Hansika Lohani
Date 28-03-2023