PETER GABRIEL
"Watch out for music. It should come with a health warning. It can be dangerous. It can make you feel so alive, so connected to the people around you, and connected to what you really are inside. And it can make you think that the world should, and could, be a much better place. And just occasionally, it can make you very, very happy."
PETER Brian Gabriel
Gabriel is an English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian recipient of MAN OF PEACE award, who rose to fame as the original lead singer and flautist of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving Genesis in 1975, Gabriel launched a successful solo career spanning nearly 40 years.
There are not enough words in the English vocabulary for me to express how I feel about Peter Gabriel and his daily musical influence on me. His music, his soundscapes, his experimental edge, his world music collaborations and introductions, fusions, lyrics, artistic innovation, humanitarian work, live shows, visuals, the list just goes on. This man is a powerhouse of everything.
As a child growing up travelling all over the world, my main introduction to music was through my family, as I didn't spend much time with others. My Aunt who brought me up had this amazing voice and had been a singer in Africa before she married my Uncle. She was a regretful ex-singer who sang every chance she could in the house. It really was the only time I think I spent feeling emotions other than fear associated with her. Most of the music she listened to was in African languages or Portuguese and though this music was beautiful I didn't relate to the songs or the culture behind them. Stereos in public places was not broadly available like today where stores will pump music out of them, and likewise I probably wouldn't have related to the music played in the places we lived either. It was rare in the 80's in Africa or South East Asia to find non communal televisions or stereos in peoples homes. The music industry from the west hadn't yet globally extended, meaning that there was a limit to popular western music in my life. That said there were, of course, the rare artist that crossed over such as Michael Jackson and Madonna, possibly Elvis before them, as the first taste of pop culture.
I was nine years old when we were finally able to receive an English speaking cable network in Indonesia. It was an interesting time for firsts for the country as it was modernising. While we lived there they opened their first mall, the first McDonalds, and the first cinema complex. My family were some of the lucky few who could afford to enjoy these things regularly, so I began to get a glimpse into western life. Perhaps it was something to do with licensing at the time, but TV show episodes would repeat several times a day and rotate back for a month until the next when a new batch would arrive. So shows like MTV would repeat music videos almost twice as much as they would in the rest of the world. Songs like Madonna's True Blue and Dire Straights "MTV" were drilled into your head and became background to our lives, because they had music videos, but artistically their impact on me was nothing compared to the first time I saw the video for Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer".
Sledgehammer was a beautiful shock to my senses. It wasn't just a song, it was a spiritual experience. His marriage of the artistic and the commercial was like nothing I had experienced before.
1986 was the release of Peter Gabriel's entire "SO" album which featured Sledgehammer that went on to be a multi-platinum album internationally. 1986 was also a very traumatic year for me.
It was the last time I saw Mother after I was brutally assaulted while in her care. It was the last time I went to Zimbabwe or visited Africa. I became a very withdrawn child after that with but with occasional displays of really bizarre disturbing behaviour in public. I was sent to several psychiatrists, counsellors and even a witch doctor.
I felt so lost but because I was so young I could only sink deeply inside myself away from the pain. My young mind started looking for anything that could relieve me, and one of earliest experience of escapism where I was completely happy was when I heard Peter Gabriel's songs. I could connect to the feelings expressed in the songs and away from my own pain. I believe this is when my true yearning for music began. I didn't know then that I wanted to be a musician, but I knew that I enjoyed escaping into music.
So time later I began to understand the Artistry of music and began to imagine being an artist. I never wanted to be cool necessarily, I just wanted to dress up in costumes and sing differently to other singers I had heard. I also knew was never going to be satisfied with just learning a song and performing it. I looked to Artists like Gabriel and later Neneh Cherry for my performance inspiration. I knew that singing on its own was never going to be enough for me. If it wasn't some kind of production then it didn't feel real to me. Eventually, most of my interactions with other young people was so that I could direct us into some kind of creative production. I rarely "hung out". We either had to be creating a dance choreography, writing a song, or performing.
In my early teens, I found myself living in England in the west country where I started my music career. Completely by chance, It turned out that I was living not very far away from Peter Gabriel Real World Studios. I spent the next few years cutting my teeth writing and performing with experimental, electronic, Trip Hop, fusion and Drum and Bass Artist who had been directly influenced or some even worked with Peter Gabriel. The strong legacy of innovation created by Gabriel gave me the room to be considered an Artists though my voice and writing style did not conform to traditional writing practices.
Though I knew I loved his music, it wasn't until I was more mature that I began to really dissect his performances and consider the cross-pollination with other Artists and musical genre’s which is the reason his music felt so connected to me. Growing up with an Irish/Scottish American Uncle and Zimbabwean Singer Aunt travelling in the way I did meant that his music touched nostalgic places in my soul, in particular, his combination of pop synths together with traditional Celtic, African and classical music.
I am able to see that as a young writer I was trying to write songs just like Peter. I wanted to create the same sense of internalised spiritual awareness of life. Deep contemplative observations and poetic expression. Experimental rhythms and fusion of styles. In 2004 I finally had an opportunity to write my first EP. I kept Peter in my mind through the process, remembered to try anything once. The results were well received. I won a place to open the Jazz World Stage at Glastonbury Festival, performed at the Jazz Lounge, I featured on Jon Peels BBC2 Glastonbury highlights as one to watch, and Glastonbury Owner Michael Eaves when announcing my win said that I had "Star Quality". This was a little taste for me of what it felt like to follow Gabriel's footsteps into my own innovation which eventually lead me to work on T.I.N.
He inspired me not only to make unique music but also to consider the impact that I could have in my own small way on the world. When my 2004 EP garnered some attention I immediately contacted the Terence Higgins Trust and Red Cross to see how my work could help, and I set up an indie label where I could give the proceeds to charity. Gabriel also taught me to be passionate about the art made by others and how I can either collaborate, support or write with them, there can be some kind of symbiotic musical relationship.
He is the King of Art for me.