If music is a universal language, harmonizing celebrates our shared humanity. “Now it’s more professional, as in I go to sessions and I’m more of a recording artist. But at Harvard, I was definitely more free-flowing, just jamming with people, making songs in our dorms. It just felt way more DIY than it does now. But I love it all anyway,” said Anna Mai Pacheco ’22, who goes by Mai Anna.
Mai Anna is a Japanese-Puerto Rican musician, specifically an R&B singer-songwriter, who grew up in Queens, New York. When she first arrived at Harvard, her father gifted her a piano. She quickly discovered a musicality within herself and became infatuated with songwriting. At Harvard, Mai Anna concentrated in Psychology with a secondary in Educational Studies, but she explored her passion for music both inside and outside the classroom.
“I went into pretty much every piano room that exists at Harvard, and I would just sing the same songs over and over again,” Mai Anna recalled. “My freshman year, I discovered my voice. I got obsessed with making music, and I dropped a five-song extended play that I self-produced, which I have since taken down because it was really bad.”
Still, her extended play project gained her admission to a songwriting class freshman year, taught by Esperanza Spalding, a renowned American jazz musician and five-time Grammy Award winner.
Spalding inspired her to pursue a career in music. “She really gave me the confidence to be an artist, and she taught me really what it means to be an artist. I think before I just was making music. I didn’t really have any background in music, and I didn’t know how to go about it. I almost went about it a little too calculatedly at one point. I think she really broke me out of that spell and was like, ‘Bro, it’s just about creation. It’s just about expression,’” Mai Anna recalled.
During this class, Mai Anna met classmate Gabe Fox-Peck ’20, a musician and producer who performs as Solomon Fox. He had experience with R&B, soul, and gospel music. He soon became her main producer. “He basically recorded my first four demos, and I’ve been making music with him since. We probably have 40 to 50 songs together at this point,” she said.
Mai Anna also took experimental songwriting classes with Professor Vijay Iyer, a Grammy-nominated jazz musician and producer, whose classes culminated with student concerts. Through her music education, she encountered talented classmates devoted to diverse genres.
Outside of academics, she rejoiced in spontaneous musical experiences on campus: “The Leverett Music Room has a Nord Keyboard, and I would just go there with everybody who makes music. We would just jam out, and we would practice the songs that I’ve made,” Mai Anna said. “And I did a lot of dorm shows in my room, and the security guards of Adams House would pull up, too. It was a vibe.”
She also performed at local gigs, including bar shows and the Middle East Restaurant and Nightclub. At Harvard, she immersed herself in the creative community through informal collaborations. Her friends Treasure “SOL” Faith Brooks ’22 and Shavonna Jackson ’22 produced visuals for several of her songs.
“I think if you search for the community, you’ll find it. By the time I was a senior, I was pretty much exclusively surrounding myself with artists and the queer community,” Mai Anna declared. “I think everyone was always so open to jam. I used to have open jam sessions in my dorm room. Like nine different people would come. People from Berklee would come. Sometimes, we were playing saxophone in my room until 2 a.m.”
Her songs typically feature laidback melodies and ethereal soundscapes, with themes like wistful nostalgia and unrequited love. She covets the intergalactic and otherworldly. Her songs “Jupiter” and “Supernova” capture the sensations of dreaming and floating through their sonic and lyrical quality. She evokes outer space—with its bizarre environments so foreign to humanity—to explain the strange depths of emotions like melancholy and longing.
After graduation, Mai Anna moved to Los Angeles to pursue her music career, while teaching and tutoring on the side. She plans to release her debut project in Feb. 2025.
“I’ve been working on my projects, dropping songs, just learning a lot from the industry. I’ve been writing songs for other artists. I had to take some time to get my financial situation set up with my side hustles, so that took a few months. But really I’ve just been writing tons of songs, finishing them up, and planning to execute visuals in these upcoming months and drop the project in February,” she said.
Mai Anna is working with producers to polish her music. She explained how it is difficult to decide when a project is ready for public consumption. “I think at this point, it’s really just important for me to put out this project for my own legacy. I think I just have so many songs that I want the world to hear, and I’ve been kind of a perfectionist, but I think it’s time to just put it out so I can move on,” she explained.
She prioritizes her creative freedom and self-authenticity as an artist. “At the end of the day, music is about expressing the honest version of yourself. So I think I always go back to, ‘What is it that I want to say? What is it that I really want to share?’ Don’t get lost in the hype or what other people say you’ve got to do. There’s no right way to do this. It’s up to you. It’s art,” Mai Anna said.
Above all, Mai Anna revels in musical performance as communion. She recalls jam sessions at Harvard and the exuberance of classmates coming together. She is excited to recapture that energy, by taking her songs from the recording studio to the stage. “My goals are to drop this project and go on tour. My favorite part of singing is singing for people, and I feel the most fulfilled on stage.”
Kya Brooks ’25 (kyabrooks@college.harvard.edu) writes Arts for the Independent.