Laura Mvula: 'I don't know if I'd be a singer without my family'

Music was the love language of Laura Mvula’s family home growing up.

“Everybody in my household is a musician, including my younger siblings and my dad,” the singer says. “I didn’t actually think of doing anything else. For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a creative musician. It’s something I feel like I understand. It’s endlessly exciting.

“There’s so much music today. We have more access than ever before. Sometimes that can be an overwhelming thing, but music is a universal language, and for me it was one of the reasons it was easy to make a decision to make a career in music.”

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Laura Mvula is speaking to the Big Issue to promote her rendition of Paul Simon’s I Know What I Know, a charity single released in partnership with John Lewis, which is donating proceeds to its Building Happier Futures programme to support care experienced people to unlock their potential.

The Birmingham-born star is proud to be involved, not just because her mother is a huge fan of John Lewis, but also because she wants to advocate for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to have more opportunities in music and the arts.

“Without my literal family and my wider family, I don’t know what I would be doing,” Mvula says.

There are more than 100,000 children living in care in the UK, many of whom won’t have access to a family support network like Mvula had growing up. Many more disadvantaged young people face barriers to a career in the arts.

“It’s probably one of the top three things in my life I care about most,” the 38-year-old says. “I feel like I grew up at a time when creative arts were freely available, including instrumental lessons. My parents would not have been able to afford to give me violin lessons or piano lessons.

“The Birmingham music service paid for kids coming from backgrounds where there was struggle so they could have a start. At my school, singing was compulsory. It was a communal activity. I don’t know if we still have that same culture of singing and music-making together in schools. For me, it makes it more important that wherever I can be any kind of light or support, I’m going to do that.”

Mvula sang in community choirs, and her aunt’s a cappella choir, and later went on to lead choirs and gospel groups. In these inclusive spaces, her talent was nurtured. 

“I’m quite a naturally shy, introverted person, aspiring to be an extrovert,” she says. “Growing up, actually just having to open my mouth to share ideas, and being in environments where that was encouraged, helped me become more confident as a human being and more individual. I don’t know if, without those things, I would even step on a stage or think about writing a piece of music.”

After graduating from the Birmingham Conservatoire with a degree in composition, she worked as a music supply teacher and a private music tutor before becoming an award-winning singer-songwriter, but there were times when she was unsure of her path.

“I was a little bit disillusioned,” Mvula says, as she recalls finishing her degree and trying to plot out her future. “What’s next? It wasn’t as clear as I thought it was going to be. Being at the conservatoire was incredible, but it was also a luxury, being surrounded by incredible students and musicians for four years, all aiming towards the same thing.

“And then all of a sudden you’re thrust into the real world. I have a degree in composition. What are you gonna do with that? Where are you going to go? For me, it was a scary and exciting place. It felt like a crossroads. I could have decided to get my teacher training and head straight into secondary schools, because I just thought there wasn’t really a platform to write and perform music.”

Laura Mvula is now an award-winning singer songwriter who has been nominated three times for the Mercury Prize – first for her debut album Sing Me To The Moon (2013), then for its follow up, The Dreaming Room (2016), and for her third and most recent album Pink Noise (2021). She also wrote the music for the Royal Shakespeare’s Company 2013 production of Antony & Cleopatra.

She also made her acting debut this year in biblical epic The Book of Clarence.

Mvula has amassed famous fans – probably most notably Prince, who invited her to his Brits after-party after she lost out to Ellie Goulding as Best British Female Solo Artist in 2014. Coldplay’s Chris Martin is also a long-time supporter of Mvula’s work, and he invited her to perform their song Violet Hill when they headlined Glastonbury this year.

She has performed with Chris Martin before, but this time he wanted her to take to the stage herself, with a choir backing her up in reminiscence of her start in music.

“It still feels like some kind of lucid dream that happened. It was hyper-surreal in a sense,” Mvula says. She is a Coldplay mega-fan, and wishes she could tell her 16-year-old self that this is her reality now.

“I think Chris Martin is just one of the best songwriters and lyricists that ever existed,” she gushes, “and I think he just is able to make music that hits really hard, but it melts you at the same time. There’s no pretentiousness there. It’s not trying to be anything other than itself.”

Mvula has spoken openly and powerfully about her struggles with anxiety and fame in the past – but the feeling she gets when she performs is something else.

Was she nervous on stage at Glastonbury? “Imagine you’re so hungry. You’re ravenous, so much that you’re not hungry any more. I think that was what it felt like with the nerves. I was so out of my mind with nerves that I was actually very chill.”

Even while brushing with stars and performing on the biggest of stages, Mvula still keeps her family at the heart of her life. Her standout moment of the year is “seeing my one-year-old niece, my only niece, enter the world and become her own person”. 

“I want to have children someday. I love children so much,” she says. “It’s been pretty life-changing, welcoming her into the family unit. And you know, the world kind of begins and ends with her.”

Laura Mvula’s re-recording of Paul Simon’s I Know What I Know supports John Lewis’ ‘Live Knowingly’ campaign. All proceeds benefit the Building Happier Futures programme. Stream the track and find out more.

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