Emily Lucy Maguire (born 8 March 1975) is an independent English singer songwriter. She has released five albums to date which are distributed through Universal by Active Media. All the songs apart from one cover version are written and composed by Maguire. She has also released two books, containing a mix of poetry, prose, song lyrics and diary entries. Maguire runs her own record label Shaktu Records with her husband Christian Dunham.
Maguire was born in South London, but most of her childhood was spent in Cambridge, England. She grew up without a TV at home and developed a passion for books and music, learning to play the cello, piano, flute and recorder from a very early age. Her father initially got her playing the piano which led to a love for classical music. She was raised with the music of Bach and Mozart. At age 12 Maguire looked destined to become a professional cellist. She played in competitions, attended courses on chamber music, and took a master class with world-famous cellist Paul Tortelier. [1]
Some years later she started to listen to other kinds of music and became obsessed with the songs of Bob Marley. When she was 17, she was involved in a car crash and a whiplash injury triggered fibromyalgia, a condition that affects the nervous system and results in chronic pain. The condition affected her mobility for several years and by the time she was 21 she had to give up her job and was on walking sticks, sometimes completely housebound.[2]
During this difficult period to pass the time and a distraction from the pain she taught herself to play Bob Marley songs on the guitar and started writing her own songs inspired by his music. With her passion for poetry, songwriting perfectly cemented her love of words and music. She wrote hundreds of songs in her bedroom and purchased a ProTools Studio to start recording them at home on a computer.[1] By her mid 20s, her health had improved and she moved back to London, and started working again doing office jobs. To begin with, Emily never saw herself as a performer, but then she got up the courage to start singing her songs in open-mic clubs.
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