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THE BiTS INTERVIEW: malaya blue

BiTS: Malaya, I want to talk to you

about your music, of course, and the
new album and new single and all the
rest of it, but can I start off by asking
you what your background is? I gather
you come from Norwich.

MB: That’s right, yes. I live in
Norwich in Norfolk. We’ve been here I
think about 12 years. I’ve been up and
down the country really. I was born in
Kent. My background, I’ve got mixed
parents. My mother came over from

Mauritius and met my father, who was
a lecturer at her training hospital and
that’s how they met, and I came along
[chuckles].

BiTS: Was there a lot of music in your

house when you were a kid?

MB: There was, yes. My father used
to sing in the house. He had this
wonderful thick Glaswegian voice and
he would sing old Scottish songs as he

went around the house in the morning opening all the curtains and getting us up for the day and
that really resonated with me, these lovely dulcet tones. Of course, when I was a child, there was no
Internet or iPads and stuff. We used to listen to vinyl records with a needle, so when he used to go
out for his evening walks, I used to listen to his record collection, and he had a real love of female
vocalists. The big female vocalists of the day, Barbra Streisand, Shirley Bassey, those big kind of

torch singers, so I kind of grew up listening to that kind of music and yes, I absolutely loved it.

BiTS: When did you decide you wanted to be a performer then?

MB: Well, I think honestly, Ian, I’ve never actually made that decision. I think that decision has
kind of been made for me over the years. I’ve been coerced in the nicest possible way. But it’s very
nerve-wracking the first few times, and actually, it’s very nerve-wracking every time, but that’s only

because you want to bring your best and you know that people have travelled and paid and bought
tickets and made arrangements and you want them to feel the value of that and feel the best of you
and the best experience of you that they can have. I’ve always been very nervous about the idea of
performing, but now that I do it, I mean now that I can’t do it, interestingly, I really want to, so this
is a good lesson for all nervous performers out there. Now that we’re in lockdown we can’t perform,

and it’s made me realise that actually performing is something that I do really enjoy doing and I

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