Alex Mahé has been entertaining children for a long time -- in fact, ever since he was a child! The middle of ten children, Alex often found himself caring for his younger brothers and sisters on his parents' farm in St. Vincent, a small Alberta community.
Alex eventually went on to become the first male graduate of Grant MacEwan Community College's Early Childhood Education program. He enjoyed playing his guitar and making up songs for his young students so much that he decided to go into the music business full time. Now making his home in St. Albert, Alex performs regularly at festivals, special events and schools all over Alberta, as well as in the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Montana. A bilingual artist, Alex has released three cassettes that contain songs in both French and English. He is currently working on two new CDs -- one entirely in English, and another entirely in French.
Paula: Why did you decide on music for a career?
Alex: I always wanted to play music. My dad told me he had played music at one time, so I had a fascination with music. He had an empty guitar case up in the rafters in the basement -- he loaned it to someone who never returned it -- and I'd go down there and would think it was something I would like to do - make music and sing. But coming from a big family of ten kids brought up on a farm we didn't have a lot of money and I asked my dad a few times if he would buy me a guitar, and he thought if he bought me a guitar he would have to buy the other nine kids something and he could not afford it. That's where the fascination started, but I didn't know where it was going to go or if it was ever going to happen, and I certainly didn't realize it was going to go into doing kid's stuff. That evolved later because I was always interested in my younger brothers and sisters, playing spontaneous games and singing little songs.
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