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Mraz has won two Grammy Awards and received
two additional nominations, and has also won two Teen Choice Awards, a People's
Choice Award and the Hal David Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. He has earned
platinum and multi-platinum certifications in over 20 countries, and has toured
in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East and
parts of Africa. As of July 2014, Mraz has sold over seven million albums, and
over 11.5 millions digital singles. His musical style, from rhythmic feeling to
use of nylon string guitar, has been heavily influenced by Brazilian music.
Mraz was
born and raised in Mechanicsville, Virginia. He is of Czech descent through his
grandfather, who moved to the United States from Austria-Hungary in 1915. His surname
is Czech for "frost". (Czech: mráz) His parents, Tom (Tomáš) Mraz and
June, divorced when he was five years old, but he maintains that he had an
idyllic childhood, saying, "My hometown of Mechanicsville was very
American. There were white picket fences, a church on every street corner, low
crime and virtually no drug use. It was a good place to grow up." After
graduating from Lee-Davis High School, where he was a member of the
cheerleading squad, Mraz attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in
New York for about a year and a half, before returning to Mechanicsville and
taking on a series of odd jobs.He then enrolled at Longwood University in
Farmville, Virginia, but instead of attending classes, headed west on a road
trip that ultimately brought him to San Diego, where he decided to stay.
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