Minya Is Making Soul Music for the Softest Parts of You

After busking her way across continents and baring her heart on stages from Brazil to Boston, London-based artist Minya is ready to open a new chapter. Her sound — a dreamy blend of neo-soul, folk, samba, and jazz — isn’t just genre-blurring, it’s soul-spilling. Following the lush debut single “crystal sea,” Minya returns with “with you (life source),” a breezy, romantic ode to those fleeting moments of perfect love that feel like they could last forever… but might not.

With her debut album “and then our souls met on the beach” set to arrive this September, Minya is capturing the rush, ache, and raw beauty of growing up — in love, in heartbreak, and in herself. We caught up with her to talk sonic soulmates, writing across continents, and how she’s learning to hold on without holding back.

1. Your debut single “crystal sea” paints such a vivid picture of love beginning on a magical island in Brazil. Can you tell us about the real-life moment or feeling that inspired that song—and how travel has shaped your songwriting?

“crystal sea” is about the terrifying and exhilarating moment of falling in love in a foreign country with someone from a different culture. I think what that song represents for me is how so much can exist underneath the surface of a song, because I wrote it at the beginning of a relationship where everything was really exciting, but there was this kind of underbelly that I guess I could even feel at that point in time. That later on turned out to be one of the most tumultuous and volatile and soul wrenching relationships of my entire life. But what I love about crystallising moments into songs is that it exists forever as “crystal sea”; something beautiful can always emerge from hardship. I would say travel has been really formative for this particular collection of songs. Aged twenty, I was living in Madrid, and I bought my first ever guitar, this beautiful black Yamaha that I actually still have and I started to write my first songs on my own. I would move around a lot on the whim of romance, trying to run away from heartbreak or searching for a new location, fresh energy. This was during the first couple of years of the pandemic, where a lot of options were closed off to people in their early twenties, and the only thing I could really feel like doing and felt that gave me some control, was to move where I could and to meet different people, try new things, see where it went. And I said to myself that I was garnering experience to write about, and I ended up forgetting about that goal and getting a little lost in the process until I stopped moving, got sober, and realised, I’ve written about pretty much all of the significant turning points in romantic relationships. 

2. Your new single “with you (life source)” feels light and joyful on the surface, but there’s an emotional depth running underneath. How do you balance playfulness and vulnerability in your music?

I am always trying to translate both the euphoric, exciting side of connections, but also pay homage to the undercurrents and the sharp edges that we sometimes neglect to mention when we poeticise. I think specificity when it comes to imagery and lyrics is really the best way to bring about that kind of playfulness. You know, like in “with you (life source),” when you mention bringing someone a peppermint tea or cuddling their knees in the bathroom, those are all vivid images and everyone can think of someone that they had that kind of relationship with. Likewise, I think that vulnerability comes out in key truths: “I have these little nightmares” because you might be my “only one” (and what if it doesn’t work out?) I think that balance between light and dark is key; while I am in this flowy love moment with you, fear is also something that is happening for me. There's not this “either or” but an acknowledgement that we are holistic beings, where multiple things are happening at once. And I don't think there's enough songwriting that really explores that full spectrum. Of course, we've been writing love songs since the dawn of time, but have we really engaged with all of the different nuances of what it means to give yourself up to someone in that way, time and again, always thinking it’s forever? 

3. Your debut album, and then our souls met on the beach, comes out in September. What does this collection of songs represent for you—and how did you know it was time to turn your stories into a full record?

Putting out this collection of songs is like birthing about eight children at once. It feels really electrifying to finally be presenting this music to the world, and introducing who I am now as Minya Day, because while I considered myself a songwriter and a musician for the last ten years and performed at open mics here and there, I knew spiritually and emotionally that I was biding my time. I was waiting for the right place and the right moment to connect with people to bring these songs to life. When I moved to the US two years ago that’s kind of when it happened for me. I started to build a fantastic musical community and meet the people that really understood what I was trying to say with my music, why I was trying to say it, why now was the right moment for me. It's kind of ironic, because part of that process was being in a very committed relationship with a fellow musician, which actually ended a week ago. But that ending also feels like a part of the whole process too, a kind of beginning in itself. This entire album is me exploring the different ins and outs of romance, the messiness of your twenties and what you're left with at the end of a connection.

And I feel like it’s very telling that in this key life moment of releasing my debut album, I am, once again, alone, left to consider everything that has happened and that is happening. All I have at the end of the journey is still and always has been these memories that I try to make sense of and form into universal truths and archives for other people to enjoy and perhaps utilise in their own personal processing. I knew it was time, because I started playing the songs out live to people, and they kept asking for the record. And actually, there were no more excuses. And as well as that, there wasn't just a lack of excuses, but there was the real tangible presence of enthusiasm. I’m grateful for that. I needed the push. 

4. You’ve cited influences as wide-ranging as Amy Winehouse, Joni Mitchell, and Hiatus Kaiyote. How do those voices show up in your sound, and how do you make space for your own?

I think it's everyone's favorite thing to say that their influences are eclectic. And I think that's the same with any kind of culture that we consume, you know, most of us don't just read one genre of book or watch one TV show. And it's the same with music, we engage with lots of different kinds of things, and then we become an amalgamation of everything that we've ever listened to. And I think that's what's happening here with these voices, and I would also cite Ella Fitzgerald, Erykah Badu, Alicia Keys, Adele; all these people I grew up listening to in my house and in my teenage years taught me how to sing, how to listen, what a groove is, what proper, meaningful lyricism looks like. And I think these voices show up in my sound in very intricate R&B inflected melodies and riffs, jazz inflections, and a consistent intention to fully relate the message of the song. Singing is, and always has been throughout time, a cathartic experience.

It's an introspection of self, an engagement with our ancestors and an interaction with the molecules in the air around us. We are simultaneously releasing something and expressing something that can and should be heard and so all these different voices, they exist in my mind, in this kind of deep purple library, where they're all having dinner together. They're having the best dinner party ever in my head. And I think they're kind of watching me from a distance and understanding that I am something that came after, and that I have been listening to everything that they've been saying, and I am now creating my own art, from them and through them.  

5. You’ve played everywhere from Club Passim in Boston to BBC Introducing in the UK. What have live performances taught you about your music that the studio couldn’t—and how do you hope your upcoming shows will connect with listeners?

I've been performing live since around the age of 11, when I played Fagin in a school musical of Oliver! and I can’t get enough of live performances, they teach you so much. They teach you what works with a crowd. They teach you what people actually like, what people will move to. What people will be moved by. Also for me, as a very improvisational vocalist in the live context, I think it lets you know where there's room for things to develop and evolve. In my live performance at Club Passim in November, for one of my songs, “blossoms,” I developed this melody in the moment that just released everything that needed to emerge from the song. I’ve just recorded that version for the final album. I'm really excited to play these songs this summer in my upcoming shows, particularly at Breaking Sound at The Star in Shoreditch, as it’s returning home, to the city where I grew up and gigged with my band a decade ago. It’s my debut appearance in the UK as Minya Day which is a special kind of personal evolution in my identity as an artist. I want to transport listeners to the original version of the songs, essentially where they began. With just me and a feeling and a guitar. I want to bring listeners to that space before they receive the album on September 5th and hear the final polished rendering, because the most important element of any great song is its poetry underneath. That’s the truth my soul is trying to speak.