Maina Doe: reinventing the torch singer for a progressive R&B era

It’s the perfect opening scene of a biopic. Maina Doe, rising Somali-Indonesian-Australian R&B star, is discovered while waitressing at a posh Sydney restaurant. “It’s very ‘girl meets business person’ and then they go on this adventure in showbiz,” Doe jokes.

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Doe remembers her now-manager casting “funny” looks at her. “At the end of the night, she was like, ‘I recognise you from somewhere.’” As it turns out, the woman had seen Doe previously – but when she was performing jazz, not bussing tables. “She slipped me her number. Literally a few weeks later we decided that we were gonna try and do this music thing together. It’s very serendipitous.” Doe promptly put in her notice at the eatery. “I hated the job, to be honest.”

In real life, Doe couldn’t be more different than her pensive persona. The expressive vocalist specialises in noirish R&B with elements of moody hip-hop and electronica. But, dialling NME on a Friday morning, Doe is quirky and chatty, revealing that she’s “quit” caffeine. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, but now my brain works without coffee. So that’s the win.”

Doe is readying her debut EP, ‘ODIWAMS’ (which stands for ‘one day it will all make sense’, stylised as a single sentence without spaces). Its six songs – including the singles ‘Witness’, ‘Lucid Dreams’ and ‘Maybe’ – are “about the world, myself, self-discovery”.

“I’ve grown the most in my resolve”

Doe’s story starts in Bandung, Indonesia, where, born to an Indonesian father and Somali mother but living with her grandmother and older brother, she had formative musical experiences. “We had a really feral childhood in the best way possible!” she laughs. “I was running around a very colourful, vibrant, creative community… We had buskers at every corner – magicians and musicians and street performers.

“Everyone plays music there, everyone knows how to play the guitar, everyone sings… It’s something you share with the community. It’s not a capitalistic pursuit or anything like that. It’s just a way of life.”

At seven, Doe joined her mother in the “starkly different” Sydney. Though she enjoyed singing soulful jazz – and idolised Nina Simone – Doe didn’t consider music a viable vocation. “Being from an immigrant family, pursuing music is often seen as kind of stupid. ‘Why would you pursue music? That’s crazy.’”

But, using her birth name Nasra, she established herself in Western Sydney’s multicultural music milieu as a backing singer and songwriter, collaborating with the likes of local trailblazer BLESSED.

In 2019 Doe launched an independent career with the quiet storm groove ‘Delusion’, subsequently tapping Genesis Owusu for the mellow ‘Unwritten Laws’. She signed to Melbourne’s fledgling R&B, soul and hip-hop label Valve Sounds (itself partnered with respected Aussie indie label group Mushroom). Today the balladeer is finding favour with global tastemakers, having garnered support from BBC Radio 1Xtra and Vogue France, which recently playlisted the airy ‘Lucid Dreams’ – currently Doe’s top track on Spotify.

“I feel like I’ve grown the most in my resolve,” Doe says. “Back in the ‘Delusion’ and ‘Unwritten Laws’ days, although I was a musician and I was already a singer and a writer, I wasn’t quite as resolved as I am now. I didn’t know what kind of music I wanted to make. I was just doing things in an explorative way – which I guess never ends… But now I feel like I know what I wanna do.”

Working with longtime Blue Mountains cohort Finbar Stuart as well as homegrown super-producers UNO Stereo, 18YOMAN and LEN20, Doe crafts an particularly fluid, singular progressive R&B – juxtaposing nostalgic ’90s aesthetics with modish electronica.

Traditionally, romantic themes dominate R&B, yet Doe writes about navigating social and cultural chicanery as a young Black woman. In ‘Maybe’ she ponders false illusion: “serving a lifestyle that’s made to deceive/Made to relieve/Losing my game to an old fantasy/What’s happening to me?”

“The R&B that comes from Australia, especially from the women, is just unique”

“I was wondering myself why I don’t write more love songs,” Doe admits, citing 2022’s sensual jam ‘Primal Design’ as an exception.“I love love songs.” She simply has other things on her mind right now than affairs of the heart. The studio, she thinks, has naturally become “my space to make sense of the world and my own experience. I end up writing about things that I observe within myself and externally from myself.”

Artists in today’s fresh wave of Australian R&B tend not to follow a “hyper-commercial template”, Doe muses. “Just looking at the peers that I admire here that make R&B – like CD and GLO and PANIA – I feel like the R&B that comes from here, especially from the women, is just unique.”

“I think, because our history here is very strange and a lot of POC-slash-Black folks here have developed a really strong sense of Australian-African identity for example, the sounds are explorative – ’cause we’re still trying to find our own sound,” she offers. “We’re still trying to find our own identity here. And that explorative nature breeds uniqueness.”

Doe will shortly announce an inaugural Australian headline tour, but she has her sights on the UK. In August she’ll return to London for sessions and shows, two years on from her first “feeler” visit. “I’m keen to see what the community is like in London and immerse myself in that – ’cause I have an affinity for what’s coming out of there musically.”

Doe is raring to go. “I’ve always felt this time crunch – and I always wanna be making music and outdoing myself musically.” She’s already planning a bigger project – her debut album. “My creative juices are flowing,” she says. “I wanna get back in the studio immediately, start the album and just make use of this inspiring time.”

Maina Doe’s ‘ODIWAMS’ is out July 5 via Valve Sounds

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