From Health to Happiness, with Cynthia Cherish Malaran
Photo: Cynthia Cherish Malaran sits in a gondola in Venice with a large stereo. She and the oarsman both smile broadly into the camera.
May 29, 2017
Cynthia Cherish Malaran was making mad money as a freelance graphic designer. She was married. She was "successful." But she was miserable. Then she got in an accident that left her body shattered and her mind with amnesia. Over a year into her recovery, music started to trigger her memories and she began to rebuild, leaving her miserable self behind. Then she got a diagnosis of a violent, advanced form of breast cancer.
"If I hadn't gotten into that accident, I would have still been miserable in this other job. Making money, but dying very slowly. And miserable."
Join us as Cynthia talks through the two tragic events that brought her life a New Beginning so rich that she's now been regularly called the "Drama-Free DJ" who's worked for clients from Oprah to hospice patients to women in prison. She has quite the story to tell.
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About Cynthia Cherish Malaran
Photo: A black-and-white photo of Cynthia Cherish Malaran wearing headphones and spinning music while getting chemotherapy treatment.
Cynthia Cherish Malaran -- aka, DJ CherishTheLuv andnicknamed by clients “the drama-free DJ” -- has produced music, custom mixes, and DJ’d for weddings, events, and shows, called on by Amy Schumer, Nile Rodgers, the We Are Family Foundation, Viacom, Comedy Central, TEDtalks, The New School for Social Research, Goddard Foundation, Heritage Radio Network, You Can Thrive!, Vanity4Humanity, Project1Voice, and more. She has brought her goodie bag of music out for corporate celebrations, white parties, ladies nights, birthdays and galas, sharing the booming sound system with legends such as Nile Rodgers, Chic, Sister Sledge, Bono, Oprah Winfrey, and Talib Kweli, M-1 of Dead Prez, Peace Poets…, at iconic locations; the Hammerstein Ballroom, The Bitter End, Cipriani, The Alexandria Center, Drom, Kumble Theater, Stockholm’s Ice Bar, Studio 450, Slake, South Street Seaport, The Constellation Chicago, Turtle Bay Oahu, Wychwood Art Barns Toronto and Silicon Valley to name a few. Cynthia Cherish Malaran has come quite a long way since making her first mix tape at age 7 of just two songs, over and over again; “We Built This City” and “Take On Me,” to designing album art for Latin music’s mega artists, Aventura. DJ CherishTheLuv is the official DJ of the Nile Rodgers We Are Family Foundation’s Three Dot Dash Just Peace Summit.
Cynthia Cherish Malaran dedicates herself to spreading freedom of movement, joy, and healing via music, rooted in a mindset she entitles “Music Heals.” She has taught DJing to children and adults ages 9-86, most recently to young girls at the Lower East Side Girls Club. DJ CherishTheLuv has brought music into the hospice setting, providing palliative pain care for terminally-ill patients. Her work in hospice was labeled “DJing for the dying” as she got paralyzed stroke patients to dance in bed, deaf patients to hear the music, and helped bring comfort in what is referred to in the hospice world as “the good death.”
Also noteworthy, DJ CherishTheLuv does public speaking engagements around the country, from the famous Carolines on Broadway comedy club to women’s workshops in the midwest, to the CUNY college system, on healing cancer, domestic violence, trauma and illness via music and dancing. She is also the Women’s Empowerment DJ at Rikers Island, for the Literacy for Incarcerated Teens program, bringing inspiration via music & DJing to the lives of women 16 and over in prison at the Rose M. Singer Center. It’s not very often that a DJ can enter the prison system due to security reasons, and when it does happen, it is a day to be cherished. And, Cherish is her real middle name, given to her by her Mother, after the oldies song of the same name, by The Association (“…Cherish is the word I use to describe…”). DJ CherishTheLuv got her DJ name from GZA, of the Wu-Tang clan, a friend she would play chess with from time to time.
Follow her on Instagram @djcherishtheluv