Ear Expansion with Anaïs Maviel

In this episode of Ear Expansion, host LaMont Hamilton speaks with Anaïs Maviel about how her Haitian lineage—especially her mother’s artistic influence and Haiti’s history—braided music with political and spiritual life, shaping her grounding in ancestry, tradition, and collective eras. Anaïs reflects on long-term disembodiment as an Afro-descendant woman in Eurocentric patriarchal contexts and describes a return to embodiment through dropping concept-driven language, becoming a wordless (and consonant-less) singer, and focusing on listening, attunement, relation, and harmony as practices for truthful connection and collective liberation. They discuss how instruments and vocal work relate to healing, how oral and choral traditions transmit wisdom through breath and the body, and how mantra, prayer, repetition, and collective singing can intentionally shape reality and invite the “Holy Ghost.” Anaïs also discusses her element- and trigram-based work Listen to the Rain as an evolving, immersive live practice.