My City January 2022

LEFT: MAXWELL WITH BAND TIHAREA FROM MADAGASCAR. BELOW: COLLABORATING WITH A MOROCCAN PERFORMER

From there, it was back to Michigan for post-graduate work focused on African music. Maxwell took a job teaching at the University of Virginia and applied for others; but Africa continued to beckon. “I was teaching French but felt in my heart that it wasn’t what I truly wanted to do,” she says. “I applied for a Fulbright scholarship to teach in Mali and was accepted.” It was then that the VOA job opened. “I heard through a friend that the host for ‘Music Time in Africa’ was retiring. 

“To this day, I get pangs of nostal- gia for living in that little village in Mali,” she adds. “Sometimes, I wish I could wake up in that little hut, feel the sun, smell the smells and be in that space. I miss the musical mo- ments when we would play instru- ments and sing under the moon- light. It’s there that I learned to play two common African instruments – the kamalen n’goni and balafon.”

MAXWELL (CENTER) WITH NIGERIAN JOURNALISTS

45