Mayah Camara and 20 Years of Synthwave
Mayah Camara’s Dreamlover opens a window onto a less discussed side of Synthwave: its enduring dialogue with the traditions of soul, gospel and neo-soul.
By Fábio César · Area Orbital · 2026-06-15 · Updated 2026-06-17
Mayah Camara and the Traditions of Black Music
As Synthwave marks two decades since the release of Teddy Boy by Kavinsky in 2006, the movement has expanded at remarkable speed.
New artists and producers continue to bring fresh work into the scene.
Yet Synthwave and its related genres inherited a significant part of their musical vocabulary from the Black American electro-funk legacy.
We explored this connection in our synthfunk playlist.
With that in mind, we turn to singer-songwriter Mayah Camara, whose artistic roots lie, in her own words, in gospel, soul/R&B and neo-soul.
The traditions of Black music appear to provide a creative foundation for her work — a spiritual reservoir and a steady source of musical ideas.
At the same time, Mayah brings these lineages into the Retro universe, carrying them into a scene that continues to reinterpret the 80s.
The influence of Black music on 1980s electronic culture is widely recognised by musicians and scholars.
Yet it does not always receive the same attention in certain popular narratives surrounding Retrowave.
This heritage can still be heard in the work of artists such as Mitch Murder and FM Attack.
Their use of electro-funk and boogie-inflected grooves points to the enduring presence of Black musical traditions within Synthwave.
Retro-obsessed
Mayah Camara has described herself as “retro-obsessed”. The phrase suggests a sensibility that continually returns to the 1980s and 1990s.
More than nostalgia, it points to an artistic orientation — a way of living and making art. A form of cultural rootedness.
This is what gives her work its sense of authenticity and coherence.
By bringing together Black musical traditions and a passion for the sounds of the 1980s, she makes a genuine contribution to Retrowave.
This contribution is also reflected in her collaborations with recognised producers such as Sellorekt LA Dreams, Memory Design and Michael Angelaux.
To understand why artists such as Mayah Camara continue to draw inspiration from soul and gospel, it is worth briefly considering how traditions survive across generations.
Tradition and Communal Memory
By “tradition”, we mean an idea, practice or cultural inheritance that is handed down across generations.
Traditions generally arise from particular foundations or ideals and continue to radiate through time.
They are constantly absorbing new contributions and new forms of expression.
One example of this process can be found in one of the major currents within Black music: hip-hop.
In freestyle rap battles, a familiar feature of many events within the scene, young participants communicate their experiences through oral improvisation.
In doing so, they create bonds that help sustain communal ties.
Researcher José Pedro Neto argues that tradition is not a mechanical repetition of the past.
His reflections on orality and culture help illuminate the communal matrix from which Black music emerged.
They also help explain why its connections with contemporary Retrowave remain meaningful today.
According to Neto:
Tradition functions as an orienting pattern of a people’s culture, transmitted between generations, usually through oral forms, and open to transformation.
There is not necessarily an attachment to the past; tradition is dynamic and remains a living aspect of culture.
It is continually reinvented without losing its roots or its orientation towards the construction of the present and the future. (1)
Belonging and Cultural Continuity
Tradition therefore becomes a living and educational reservoir in which the elements necessary for maintaining collective identity are continually reshaped.
Culture and orality, together with the symbolic repertoires shared by communities, form part of this ongoing process.
This perspective suggests that traditions do not exist in a vacuum.
They are enacted within communities, where symbolic and spiritual references bind individuals together.
In doing so, traditions provide meaning and a sense of continuity across generations.
It also helps explain why such references continue to resonate with contemporary artists.
Gospel and other branches of Black music have remained important custodians of these inheritances.
And in Mayah Camara’s work, they acquire new configurations.
As Neto also observes, popular cultures constitute a rich and heterogeneous set of symbolic, economic and political expressions.
They are continually recreated by the individuals, groups and communities that practise them. (1)
From Orality to Retrowave
Black music has its roots in African peoples whose diasporic journeys carried vast cultural traditions far beyond the African continent.
Discussing African societies whose cultures were grounded in oral transmission, anthropologist Maria Lúcia Montes writes of:
non-literate societies in which history and memory become inseparable and are known through oral narratives.
Such orality relies heavily on mnemonic instruments such as the rhythms of musical instruments and singing, often supported by dance, which places the entire body in motion.
These were dialogical structures found in many musical forms, with call-and-response patterns between soloists and choruses and an interweaving of different instrumental parts, especially percussion. (2)
Montes argues that these structures continue to persist within a Black cultural memory.
Rhythm, song, dance and instrumental interplay therefore form an interconnected way of inhabiting the world.
It is perhaps no coincidence that Mayah herself has said she has been singing since the age of twelve and cannot imagine life without it.
The story then moves to the Americas. There, African-descended peoples endured the hardships of life in the cotton plantations of Mississippi.
From this experience emerged Delta blues, one of the most influential musical forms of modernity. It would eventually spread far beyond the United States.
Throughout the twentieth century, these Afro-diasporic cultures crossed the Atlantic and helped shape European musical scenes.
Their influence was felt first in France and later in Britain.
Within this historical journey, Mayah Camara’s observation about the “depth of the musical traditions of soul and gospel” acquires a particular significance.
The New Album
If tradition survives through memory, rhythm and reinvention, then Mayah’s work may be understood as one more chapter in this long continuum.
Her attraction to the aesthetics of the 1980s represents an active reworking of inherited forms through synthetic textures and electronic production.
Retrowave itself is, in many respects, a reinvented tradition. It does not reproduce the 1980s literally; it reinterprets them.
And Mayah matters because she brings gospel, R&B and neo-soul into Synthwave.
Together, they have helped shape the sonic imagination that contemporary Retrowave continues to celebrate.
Emerging from London’s music scene, singer-songwriter Mayah Camara is now releasing her new album, Dreamlover.
The record is centred on the theme of love.
It features numerous guest appearances in both production and vocals, including 7 Rising.
JJ Mist and Lazerclub1984 also appear on the singles “Never Lie to You” and “Stay”, respectively.
On Dreamlover, Mayah moves between energetic pop numbers and more melodic, soul-inflected pieces.
Yet even the gentler songs retain a danceable groove.
At times, they evoke the sophisticated funk of Patrice Rushen.
They also recall the romantic mood of many male-female vocal pairings popular during the 1980s, including those associated with Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack.
Dreamlover offers a fascinating meeting point between nostalgia and living musical traditions.
It will particularly appeal to listeners drawn to the melodic warmth of 80s pop, the spirit of FM radio and the synthetic textures of Retrowave.
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Photos: mayahcamara.com
(1) NETO, José Pedro da Silva. “Tradition: Past, Present… and Future?” In: Revista E, SESC-SP, no. 2, Year 26, August 2019, pp. 38–41.
(2) MONTES, Maria Lúcia. “Memory and Intangible Heritage”, p. 134. In: Miranda, Danilo Santos de. Memory and Culture: The Importance of Memory in Human Cultural Formation. São Paulo: SESC-SP, 2007, pp. 127–135.
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This article is an original work by Fábio César, first published by Area Orbital (Brazil).
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