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All you need is love: one Chilliwack musician’s mission to help the world through love

Musical artist Mauvey is planning a 50-city, four continent world tour to spread love
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With his sights set on changing the world, local musician Mauvey is spending his days planning a 50-city world tour that’s scheduled to takeoff from the Chilliwack Cultural Centre on April 27.

Born Ransford Laryea, 30-year-old Mauvey has been a world traveller since a young age: born in the Republic of Ghana and raised in Southampton, England, Mauvey—a pastor’s son—developed roots in the Fraser Valley after spending time in the area as an exchange student.

"Most people done't really know what the colour mauve is: is it a shade of pink? purple? blue? grey? There are many shades of mauve, just like there are many shades of me. I'm Mauvey."

“I went to high school in Agassiz for one year as an exchange student,” said Mauvey. “I lived with a family there and went to school there and visited throughout the years after leaving.”

And even though he branched out and experimented with several creative outlets throughout secondary school, Mauvey said he decided to jump into athletics after he finished school and began playing basketball professionally in a top European league.

“Basketball is the thing I loved to do the most,” he said. “I was just able to go out there and sustain myself by playing basketball—that’s every athlete’s dream, to make a living doing what you do—but then I thought to myself, ‘Nobody knows me. I’m not doing anything. I’m not making an impact.’”

It was then, Mauvey said, he felt called to stop playing basketball and examine his life. “I felt like I’d been told so many ways that year to be brave and make a change and just do it, however I was going to do it.

“I didn’t know (at the time that) it was going to be music, I just knew it was going to be something creative.”

Hanging up his sneakers and picking up pen and paper, Mauvey stepped away from professional basketball and began writing. First short stories and poems, then songs.

“In prep school I met my mentor—my creative writing teacher,” explained Mauvey. “She challenged me to write a poem every day, so I did. I’d give it to her in homeroom every morning. I got used to being able to write as much as I could, which helped me learn skills like manipulating the English language.”

During this same time, Mauvey said he witnessed racism against a close friend that caught him off guard. “I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I needed to do something because that wasn’t okay. But how could I make an impact in my own way on the entire planet?”

However, Mauvey didn’t pull that question back out of his pocket and began seriously thinking about how to approach it until after he moved to Chilliwack several years ago.

“I’ve thought about that question for the past two years: how am I going to do it? I (thought) of the most important things the world needs, and the thing that was lacking the most was love,” said Mauvey.

“My idea is to distribute love through creative arts: my goal (is) to get on a platform and spread love.”

And while not everyone in the musician’s life understands his global undertaking, Mauvey says “that’s just what any creative person deals with. (But) the people who are shaping the world are actually the creative ones.”

“As long as I believe in myself, I can execute this world tour, book and plan it, and go out and share love,” added the artist. “I call it love therapy and it’s helped me in my own life.”

“But I wanted to do everything properly,” Mauvey said of his Love Therapy World Tour. “The Canadian part of the tour is from April to June, then to England. In October we tour the USA, then head to Australia for November, December is New Zealand, then West Africa, which is what this was all boiling down to—I’m Ghanian, I’ve always been Ghanian.”

By the time he steps on stage at the Chilliwack Cultural Centre with special guests Atlas to Earth and Parliament of Owls, Mauvey will have been planning the Love Therapy World Tour for the better part of a year, and he expects the tour to keep him travelling until at least next year.

Tickets to the Love Therapy World Tour Apr. 27 kickoff concert are $15, and can be purchased online at the ChilliwackCulturalCentre.com, or by calling the box office at 604-391-SHOW (7469).


@SarahGawdin
Sarah.Gawdin@theprogress.com

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