[READ our review of STR4TA’s Aspects here and add it to your collection here.]
Having spoken with Gilles Peterson recently about the wonderful STR4TA album Aspects, it would have been remiss not to speak to his collaborator, friend and musical legend Jean-Paul “Bluey” Maunick of Incognito fame. Over the course of our recent discussion, it became clear that this is a man of incredible artistry, humanity and one seemingly born to pursue a life in music.
We spoke about the STR4TA project but also about the Brit Funk era first time around and his role in its development, as well as the shock of moving to the UK as a child and how he has maintained a career with such longevity and purpose. To say it was a joy, would be to sell it short—it was everything a talk with a legend could be.
I wanted to thank you for joining me today, particularly in light of the loss of your father on Saturday. Please accept my deepest condolences for your loss.
Thanks very much.
I’m so sorry, but I’m also glad you were able to see him at least, fairly recently.
Yeah, that’s right. You know sometimes we can leave off things until a later time, thinking we’ll be able to do all the things we want.
We imagine we have all the time in the world.
It’s taught me never to leave the house angry, to make those phone calls that you need to make, to let people know you love them.
I tried to find out a little bit about him, although I was hampered by my awful French and he seemed like a great man and many of the themes of his work and poetry are still very relevant today.
Extra clear at the moment! More so than when he wrote them!
That's quite petrifying in its own way, isn’t it?
It definitely is.
I have a real desire to ask you about so much of your career including your very earliest years in Mauritius and so on, but I’d like to start with the project that led us here, which is the STR4TA project with Gilles Peterson. I’ve already had a chat with him, so it will be really interesting to get your perspective on things too. Let’s see if we can outdo him in some way!
That will be very tough to do with Gilles—he’s a force of nature!
That’s certainly the impression I got from him—we’ve got our work cut out! So why now? Why work with him on STR4TA?
It’s kind of weird because when I first met Gilles, he was this teenager interviewing me about jazz funk around ’80 or ’81 when the first Incognito album was released. He had this energy about him, he was so enthusiastic about seeing me. Some people lose that or grow out of that or life changes them and though life may have changed Gilles in other ways, life certainly hasn’t taken that edge off him. I always consider that energy to be an edge that can get rounded off and I know only a handful of people who have kept that feeling as they’ve got older. And I, obviously, have met a lot of people in my music career, travelling the world and so on and Gilles is probably top of that small pile of people who have retained that energy. So, when people like that talk to you about a project, you feel like you’re right back there. Whatever we do, we never lose sight of that first catalyst that brought everything together.
But with a new generation looking at funk in a brand new way, there was only one person on the planet who could make me go back there and that was Gilles. Every time we talked about it, I felt so comfortable with him, so making the music with him was the easiest thing. You know, when I sit down and think about doing a new Incognito album, there’s so much to think about: band lineups, how to accommodate this singer, what radio wants, can I get on Smooth Jazz in America even though we’re a bit too edgy for them—everything gets overthought. But with this project there was much less thinking about that kind of stuff.
More instinctual?
Yes, instinctual. Which is the way we recorded it too—it’s hard to put away all the things you’ve learnt and accepted about the whole process of recording music. Yet we put them away—we had to lose them and go back.
I guess there’s a chance you become inhibited or constrained if you think too much about those things you mentioned (radio play, etc.). Do you think that by shedding those thoughts you were freer when you recorded the album?
Yes, even in terms of approaching a vocal line (as I am the main singer on this project), it was thinking of a theme and turning it into a kind of chant. Thinking about people dancing to it really—it’s like the music of Roy Ayers with just a little hook that sends you. It’s not so much about the depth of the lyric as it is about the “jam.”
I spoke with Gilles a little bit about this—the release of the album came at the perfect time. This music always chimes with spring for me, its positivity and upbeat qualities reflect that time of new growth and fresh shoots.
That’s exactly it. When we were part of the movement back then, when I was part of Light Of The World, Freeez and then Incognito, the whole thing was the excitement of doing something we had never done before. We were breaking new ground—there were new paths, new visions and new goals. It was like a first kiss! In recording those early albums, we didn’t know those things I’ve mentioned like radio play and marketing, etc. All we thought about was dancing! Take away all those things and that’s what you’re left with—the groove to dance to.
When we first came out, part of it was seeing people dance as you were performing. You’d see those guys at Club 7 or at The Royalty in Southgate (a north London suburb) and having that visual of the dancers added something to the music we made. We would see a guy dipping in a certain way and know what type of sound would make him do that. All the ideas were related to dancing and club life. We weren’t thinking anything spiritual—it was the escapism of dance, the ability to shake off your worries and live on the dance floor. But at the same time, we were at a point where we were beginning to see what society was like all around us and that we were breaking new ground.
Gilles talked about how it was a self-generating movement in that it fed and nurtured itself without too much outside interaction. There was the club scene and then the records came from within the scene instead of from the US. And then when Hi Tension appeared on Top Of The Pops in 1978, he described it as quite mind-blowing as to how it got there from this scene he was a part of.
Exactly! Just seeing it accepted and hearing it on the radio was amazing. I remember working in a factory in Enfield (the northernmost London Borough) and Hi Tension came on the radio and I’d seen them the night before. You just weren’t expecting to hear that on Radio 1 at all, as it was all pop music. And then I heard my own record, Incognito, on the radio and I left factory life. I just dumped my stuff and never came back! I walked out, waving goodbye to it all. I’d promised myself if I heard my stuff on the radio, I would stop working and focus on the music.
To bring it back to STR4TA for a moment—one of the great things about it was that some of the older guys that had gone through it in the day were on board too. Alongside them were some younger guys and that helped to keep it fresh. There’s a whole heap of younger bands gravitating towards it—I get calls every day asking for support or to produce from Paris, Italy and even from Russia! Just yesterday a Russian band called me up and asked me to produce something for them. I couldn’t leave them hanging so I gave them some encouragement and advice. It is really opening up—I’m hearing Japanese bands now with the influence and it’s made it into the charts over there. This “little” thing we’ve done has just been done with pure love and a “let’s just do this” energy and is sitting next to massive artists in Japan. It just goes to show that there is an energy that comes from doing things with musical integrity, which sometimes gets lost along the way.
I think it’s come from a place of deep love too. Not to say that other projects by other artists are done without love, but that spontaneous feeling of working without the “business” part of the music world offers such joy.
You’ve hit it on the head there. Very often during the sessions for the album, there would be a lot of enthusiasm for a groove or a sound that we’d want more of. People would be jumping around the room in affirmation of what they were hearing and we could just go with it. Sometimes that gets lost because you’re aware of schedules and timings for when people are available and making sure charts are available. No one was reading charts on this one and it’s a different experience from the one I normally have, so it was refreshing to do, for sure. Then when it’s done and the feedback from people is as positive as it has been, it is incredible.
That feedback must be a great joy for you, but is it also vindication for a career where you’ve stayed true to those foundations? You’ve had a very long and successful career, but you have stayed very close to those core feelings and beliefs from the beginning of it.
Yes. Even when covering a song, I’ve always covered ones that formed and shaped me as a musician and person. You know, Stevie Wonder, Lonnie Liston Smith, Roy Ayers and Ronnie Laws’ “Always There” and so on. I’ve never covered them because we needed a hit or whatever —it was to reflect where I come from and the musical language that speaks to me. They were never done to meet those original artists (although I did!) —it was to stay true.
I see some of the older bands that came up with me and they began to chase hits. You know, Freeez got remixed by Arthur Baker and became something else entirely. They became electro and lost their jazz funk edge and then became “pop,” but at the end of the day they come back and realize what they had. It’s become diluted and you’ve lost your way a little because of that. When the Mizell brothers did their music at Motown and worked their way up to jazz funk and fusion, there was a line they followed—they didn't stop halfway through and go and do a film score or produce a pop artist. Many of the older guys see what we’re doing with STR4TA and say “we were part of it, we did that.” I try to explain to them that they changed and stopped that journey.
I guess you lose a spirit or an essence of what you started out as.
Yes! That’s exactly it—you haven’t completed the story. The reason this STR4TA is working is because it is still part of the story—it’s never stopped. Sometimes the past comes back, we see that all the time with music and fashion. It’s there in food, architecture—everything!
Looking at Gilles and you working together, it seemed to me that it was more a case of him tuning back in to where you are and have been. Given that he wears so many different “hats,” that was inevitable, I guess.
And because he is a DJ, he is a collector. He plays that collection as a reflection of him, whereas those same things may be in me, but they don’t form part of my day-to-day life like they do for him.
Just to go back to something you mentioned earlier, as someone who is currently sitting in “sunny” Enfield—where did you work in Enfield before the music took off?
I worked at the Arbiter factory because I knew they had musical instruments in there. They were doing the Fender collection and I was working in their warehouse. Before that, I worked at Commercial Gowns on Commercial Street. I worked in McDonald’s in Wood Green as well. It was all through an agency—I could pick up temporary jobs in between gigs and earn some extra cash. The other workers hated me because I would work as hard as possible and do the extra hours or whatever it took to make the extra cash so that I could then do gigs. They just wanted to get through the day without any extra bother! But I had a purpose—I had the amplifier to buy, guitar strings to purchase.
I’d like to go even further back if that's ok, to your upbringing in Mauritius. I am contractually obliged to ask you about it, as my wife’s family is Mauritian!
So, you know the good food?!
I do—my waistline tells that tale! So, to go back to those days, I’d like to ask you about sega music (folk music from Mauritius). My only real experience of it is at family functions when late in the evening the older generation take over for a couple of songs and they begin to dance! So how does a young lad raised on sega music come to love and play the music that we’re talking about?
Well, my first memory of being on planet earth was listening to music on the beaches (of Mauritius). It would be the sea and music—my first functioning memory. My father wasn’t in my life when I was younger and my mum was out at work, so there was no one around to take photographs. You know sometimes our memories are prompted by photographs or are actually replaced by those photos. But my memories are really strong, and I know that from the age of 5, I’ve known exactly what my purpose was supposed to be. I knew it was going to be music.
In terms of sega music, it is primarily dance music, but it also has a very raw connection to ancestors. That’s what sega music offers—the roots of it lie in African music and slavery. The raw rhythms and tightening the drum skins over fires—they are African. I heard those same rhythms in the music that came to Mauritius—the R&B, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones—it was there. I didn’t have the knowledge that it was Black music and where it had come from, but from an early age I could see, hear and feel the similarities.
So, if someone had a guitar, I would pick it up and play it. I was connected with it immediately and could play after watching others play it. People would see me and say, “sing a song,” but I was sharp, man! I come from a background of not having much, but knowing if you have something to offer, someone will pay for it! If I knew they had money, I would quote a price for a song—I was a businessman! If you wanted to hear my songs (and I wrote them from the age of 7 or 8), then you were going to pay for it.
That must certainly have stood you in good stead for a career in the music business!
Oh yes, but then coming to Britain when I was like 9 or 10, getting into that Volkswagen Beatle that my uncle had at the airport and driving to Edmonton from Heathrow, I looked out the window and it was grey, wintery and pretty miserable. But I wasn’t looking out for what people would normally look for, I was looking for Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney! I knew they were in London and this is where I had come to. I had this idea that I was coming to this place where I was meant to be. The idea from others had been to come to the UK to get a better education and to learn more, but I was more interested in making music and going on stage to play. I knew where I was going.
How did coming to the UK affect your musical tastes and what was the community like that you arrived in? As someone who has lived in Enfield for 20 odd years, I can tell you what it was like when I came, but what was it like for 10-year-old Bluey?
At first, I was at odds with everything because I’d come to live with a family of Seventh Day Adventists, and it was all church music with no drums allowed. I was always seen as a rebel because I would be playing little riffs like The Shadows and then my eyes and ears became open to other things too. I’d look at my cousin’s Melody Maker or New Musical Express or whatever was out at the time. And then I gravitated towards people with record collections, so I learnt about Eric Clapton and Derek and The Dominos (in fact that was the first album I ever bought with money from cleaning people’s houses and doing odd jobs). During summer holidays, I would stay at friends’ houses that had record collections and just sit and listen. I was really fortunate to have a brother-in-law who had good soul music and he introduced me to everything—Barry White, Curtis Mayfield and the jazzier stuff as well.
In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, you’d get teachers who would get frustrated with me because I was a dreamer, while I was really frustrated by a society that really didn’t want me here. Racist thugs were beating me up every other day—I ended up in hospital with fractures, broken bones and all kinds of things. Stabbings aren’t a recent thing, you know!
So, the musical journey was even more important because it took me to a place where there were people who were accepting of me. People with good record collections were decent human beings because great music impacts on you. Every time someone looked out for me and fed my hungry self, it happened to be people with a good record collection. To see someone and notice someone in need of help, is to have a wider view of the world and the music reflected that. I didn’t make that connection at the time, but looking back it was easy to see.
My cousin, whose mum really looked after me and my mum when we had almost nothing, he had those three great Stevie Wonder records—Talking Book, Innervisions and Fullfillingness’ First Finale and he was the one feeding me those things. He also had Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin—bands like that and we’d listen to Emerson, Lake and Palmer too. Anything done with great musicianship and I learnt to love everything! Coming out of the ‘60s, I had hippy cousins listening to Hendrix and Santana and another one who loved Prog Rock. Then one day, I went to the West End and saw these pretty cool looking people going downstairs to a record shop and followed them and that’s where I discovered Herbie Hancock and Headhunters and all that.
Then one teacher came to me with two guitars and said that he realized that others had told me that I wouldn’t amount to much, but he had faith that I would shine. Then he put Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” on and asked if I could jam along to it, so I did! He said then that he knew I was going to be fine. That was the opening of the musical path for me.
For me, as a music lover, that's what it’s always been about. Somebody, some artist or song or album acts as a musical gateway “drug” so to speak—opening up the musical world to you. My gateway, although I’d liked other things along the way, was Prince. I began to trace things backwards to his influences, sideways to his contemporaries and it shaped the future of my love too. You would read interviews where he would drop Miles Davis’ name in and that would start an exploration. My dad loved traditional jazz, but then I found out jazz was this really cool thing too?! You build those bridges and those links between it all, don’t you?
So, what was your first Prince album then?
I wish I was cool enough to be able to say one of the golden ‘80s period, but I was born in ’75 so was a little young and sheltered then! It was actually the Love Symbol album from ’92 that got me.
He was so special, man. I’ll never forget working in a record shop on Tottenham High Road and the van pulled up with For You in it, amongst the other records. The guy in the shop said I should check it out because he played all the instruments, everything was him. The only ones I’d heard that could do that were Stevie Wonder and Shuggie Otis. I suddenly made the connection between the three of them—there is something about people who take control of the whole thing, there’s something magical that comes out of it. Even when they do work with other musicians and producers, their sound is still so recognizable as them. You can’t escape it—it’s an imprint, their musical DNA.
I’m really interested in talking about the beginning of your musical career with the bands that you’ve mentioned (Freeez, Light Of The World, etc). What was the ecosystem that was around it like? The clubs, the DJs, the people—what were those early days like? You’ve mentioned it a little, but they must have been quite thrilling days!
Really exciting because although there was a disco movement before it, that contained a little bit of everything, you know—you could hear a Barry White record or a Joe Tex one, but then hear an Elkie Brooks one or Joe Cocker. So, you’d get up and dance to the tunes you liked with your people.
Then the DJs like Chris Hill and Robbie Vincent started to buy imports of records from America and there was an excitement about things because then you had Black kids mixing with white kids but before that there had been a little bit of tension. Sure, we were all in a club together but there was still a divide. I remember asking this girl out and she said she couldn’t go out with me because we weren’t supposed to “mix.” There was a lot of that going on at the time and I’d come from a pretty mixed place (Mauritius), so I never understood that until me and mum came to England and were looking for houses and places to live and you’d see the signs outside: No Blacks, no Irish, no dogs, no Pakis.
But what came out of that time with those clubs and those records and a different way of thinking was seeing that there were no barriers. No matter what culture or race, if you could dance to this, then you were alright! If you could hang with the music, you could hang with the people. You’d become partners. Some of the stigma was going. I never overthought it then, it just hit me later.
It’s rare you do at the time.
It was happening and clubs were being born of it. Once we started a “scene,” then there would be others who followed. That’s how bands like Spandau Ballet and Haircut 100 cottoned on to it. The clubs they would visit were in the West End and more sophisticated with a different crowd. Dial 9 For Dolphins club night and all kinds of movements tied into the iD magazine rather than Black Echoes and Blues & Soul.
But it was a melting pot that would become mainstream—whilst it was us and we were doing it, I felt I lived in an energy bubble that I just wanted to keep going. I can’t speak for other members of other bands, but that’s how I felt. This was fantastic and amazing, everything I’d dreamt of. We were going to recording studios for the first time—this was the Holy Grail. Recording studios, you know? I can’t tell you what it was like stepping into the studio and seeing one of those big 24-track tapes! To go from that to going to a club that night, it was amazing. Perhaps even going to the club with an acetate and hearing Chris Hill drop it! It was magic.
Do you think that you’ve ever matched that high? You’ve had such great successes, but have you ever felt something joyous so sharply?
I keep telling people that you can’t repeat a first kiss! There’s a nervousness about it, an awkwardness. There’s excitement, there’s expectation because you’ve been waiting for so long. Sure there will be other kisses and you can have deeper feelings about things but the first one, is the first one! So, it’s not something you can ever replicate, but doing STR4TA is like getting back in touch with that feeling.
Do you still get a sense of excitement going into the recording studio or is it now so ingrained in you that its normal?
I’m one of those guys that gets excited when I see an amplifier or I see the bus pull up to go on tour—I’m beyond myself! When I take my place on the coach and set up my space with speakers and all that, it’s mad stuff, brother. It’s brilliant every time and if I go to a new studio, it's a thrill. I’ve got my own studio and some days I just go in there early to look at it and bask in the joy it brings. If you take me to an Abbey Road or another studio with history, I’m like a kid in a candy store—that’s what keeps me going.
That must come from that singularity of purpose that we talked about earlier.
Oh, yes. A child that knows who he or she is has got something undefinable that people don’t really understand. Some people have known their path from an early age and it doesn’t make us any better, but it makes us focused and capable of a different reaction to the things we love. That journey has been set for a long time, but you lose it if you get complacent. The more you nurture it, the more it stays with you. Learning is a big part of it too.
I’m like that as a musician, but also as a DJ. I have a show on Apple Radio and they just want me to talk about my connection to the records I play; tell stories and show my love for the tracks I play. So that connection is what it is all about and we know that education never stops either—we are always learning. I’m excited about the next turn, the next route my path is going to take. I have to learn new things to keep going—so, for example, due to the pandemic, we’re going to be doing two live streamed shows with Incognito and I have to work out how to do that. It's a very different thing streaming a performance than performing in front of a live crowd and I have to learn how to do that well.
I was looking at the list of people you have collaborated with or produced. Obviously, it is a feather in your cap and testament to your talents and abilities, but I thought it was, aside from everything else, a series of massive learning opportunities. When you start to work with a George Benson, a Chaka Khan or, let’s go right to the top here, Stevie Wonder—what do you learn from people like that?
Firstly, you learn that because you know what you’re doing is your truth, people will gravitate towards that truth. So, it’s not impossible to meet your heroes because they understand that what you’re doing is your truth. Your truth is connected with them and they know that and can feel that. I’ve always felt comfortable around those people and they feel comfortable around me. When I worked with Chaka Khan for the first time and she walked into the room, I saw that she’d been travelling and she was in high heels and now she had to go on stage and rehearse this thing with us. She said she was tired and her feet hurt, so I said let’s get her some hot water to soak her feet in, let her relax and take a piano into the room where she is and let’s rehearse there while she soaks her feet! It’s seeing people when they need to be seen. When I met Stevie Wonder, I wasn’t hassling him, I was just being myself around him because it was my environment too.
It’s in essence “birds of a feather flocking together,” isn’t it?
Yeah, and if you’ve gone out there and spoken your truth, then they will gravitate towards you and whether it be George Benson, Phillip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire, Al Jarreau or whoever, they will say things that will inspire you further. You know, if it wasn’t for Al Jarreau, I wouldn’t have done three solo albums. I started doing them quite late in my career as I always saw myself as a demo singer, but when I worked with him (and Mario Biondi), he asked who was singing on the demo of the track we were doing. I was petrified! So, I sheepishly apologized and he pulled me aside and said I should do something. He told me I hadn’t released my voice yet.
That’s amazing to hear from someone as gifted as him.
If someone like that tells you to do it, you have to do it! If I get told by Leon Ware I should do a song for such and such, then I’m going to go and do it—that’s the word right there! When you work with people like that, you’re either lucky (which I’ve always considered myself to be) or you’re understood and recognized. Seeing people is really important—whether it’s a child at the beginning of their life or career or someone who is hurting that you can bring comfort to, seeing people and being that person who sees them is my forte. That is what I do better than being a musician. All the sum of everything is about me taking my journey and seeing people who need me. That way I can be a better producer and songwriter because I can write a song for Maysa (Leaks), I can write a “Deep Waters” that gets played endlessly and give her something that people can really believe in.
It’s really clear when I did a little research that you really subscribe to this “each one, teach one” way of thinking about life. Whether you think of that as a duty or responsibility, I don’t know. Where does that come from?
That comes from not having as a younger man. Not having everything on a plate and knowing that someone saw you. We talked earlier about the people with their record collections who saw that I was hungry. I never told them I was hungry, but they recognized it and boy, did I eat them out of house and home! It's the understanding that if you’ve been at that end of the scale, you help those folks when you get a chance. If life gives you opportunities and success, you need to see those in need like you were.
If the world ran like that, we’d all be in a much better place, wouldn't we?
That’s the idea!
I looked at the Incognito work in particular and the vocalists you’ve featured there and the only word I could think of to describe them was “powerhouses.”
That’s right—which is why I saw myself as a demo singer!
Is there anyone out there who you would chase for, say, the next Incognito album?
Oh, yes, I hear people all the time. There’s something I gravitate towards—like a D’Angelo, an Erykah Badu, a Jill Scott. Then there’s people on a slightly different tip like Nai Palm from Hiatus Kaiyote—anybody who has a connection with the public with their tones and way of phrasing. I’m always looking for great singers, but once you make music of a certain quality, great singers come to you. Obviously, Maysa (Leaks) is top of that pile for me because I think she’s one of the most underrated singers in the world and I still hope that someone like a Quincy Jones turns round and starts to speak about her or opens some doors for her. I’ve tried to open doors for her through her life. I mean, she’s got a level of success, but she’s as amazing a singer as I’ve ever come across and I’ve worked with a lot of great singers. She’s a truly blessed individual.
How do you feel about the proliferation of these singing talent shows? How do you view those as someone who works with the very best singers there are?
It’s always been there, it’s just become the mainstream and someone has found a way to market it. It's a very marketable thing, but we had those shows in the ‘60s when I came over—you know, Search For A Star and so on. They’ve always been there. Sometimes those competitions can open doors and show us something incredible, but most of the time it is going to show us not just the person but the whole marketing ploy that's going to be used to push them into the world. There are a lot of people who are going to make money from it.
And most likely, not the singers.
Yeah, and the shame is that we don’t have a programme that's not a competition but is just a showcase for talent—I’d like to see that. Let people from all walks of life have an input, rather than those who are going to be making the money out of it. Let them explain how it moved them, what impact it had on them. But that is in a world that ain’t making no money! No-one’s gonna get super rich from that. All those competitions are doing is making someone extremely rich! I see them in the same way as someone selling God on TV—people who are criminals really, taking money from people and selling the Lord. It's the old, the impoverished…
The vulnerable people.
Yes, the vulnerable people and they make fun of these vulnerable people. I don’t have time for it. I’ve come to a point in my life where, although I’ll laugh at something from time to time, I have to check myself because ridicule is something we should try to eradicate from society. Too often we put something or someone down and we ridicule them, make them a laughingstock. We then miss the opportunity to see the good that that person can bring. That kind of talk, I try to get rid of it. I’ve been guilty in the past.
We’re all human.
Yeah. I find those shows to be the epitome of ridicule.
Something that should be about uplifting and spotting talents often descends to the other extreme.
Also, they bring people to a place where there’s a format to performing—they have to hit that high note and hold it for the crowd to engage with it. That’s why certain people won’t be able to enjoy an album by Roberta Flack because she could sing an entire song without hitting and holding a long high note, but it will melt away and tear away at your heart. Anyone who goes on a show like those and sings one of those songs is doomed for failure because they’d “miss” the high notes and the things that pull at people’s heart strings.
When I spoke to Gilles about the album and associated bits and pieces from his career, he was very insistent in pointing out your talents, achievements and influence. He wanted to put you front and center and see you recognized for your key role in developing music in this country. Is it important for you to get that recognition, because he certainly felt you deserved it?
I think he feels that way because people haven’t given it to me and I’m not the kind of person to go chasing it, but I’m ok with not having it. I’ve never sought it. Sometimes I’ve even shunned away from it.
I remember being part of the MOBO awards when they started up—they asked me to be part of the committee and then it turned into something else. I had to question the direction; I even went with a banner asking where the “soul” was because they didn’t even have a soul music category. I got in the newspaper for that and probably got shunned and never given another MOBO since then.
But its ok, you just have to learn that to be “you” is the best thing. I started writing a book a few years back and got to a decent size and then I tore it all up and threw it in the bin. It was so satisfying! I did that because in writing the book I had to talk about others—some of the funniest stories I wrote would have compromised someone else if I told it and the amount of clearance I would have ended up doing would have become a burden. I began to wonder why I was doing it—I’d probably make some money and it would be a laugh, but then I started thinking about who’s expense those laughs would be at. I realized that I didn’t want any of that and that’s the (better) part of me that I want to nurture. The person that is beyond that and wants to do what he can to help another person. I have a good life and anything I need in life tends to gravitate to me.
But to take it back to Gilles, he wants credit where credit is deserved and that’s not just me. He’s always highlighting music from all over the world and raising the profile of incredible international musicians who are not known in the UK and beyond. That’s the friend side of him that takes that stance, but he knows that I don’t really need it.
Or want it.
Yeah.
What is next on the horizon for you?
I’ve got various artists I produce—there’s a girl called Roberta Gentile that's coming out, another young lady called Abi Flynn who has fought and overcome cancer and whose album is an account of that battle and is cathartic for her. I’ve got a guitar album coming out which is not seeking radio or press coverage at all—I just wanted to make it. Whatever it does, it does. I’m not looking for any approval at all.
This is for you.
Yup. Totally selfish! Two guitar players (Francisco Sales from Portugal and myself) just jamming over tracks! Some of it is quite cinematic, some of it touches on different emotions we wanted to explore. And another STR4TA album is almost finished.
Yes, Gilles mentioned that. He hinted at some big (American) names being involved with this next chapter—can I persuade you to spill the beans?!
No chance! I don’t want to put the “mockers” on it!
Fair enough! I’ll finish up then with the final question we always ask interviewees, although it may drive you insane and cause those better parts of you that we’ve talked about to be left behind! What are your 5 favorite albums of all time?
Obviously like many people, the first will always be What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye—this is where I learnt about the Vietnam War, picket lines and so on. It opened up my world of music and he fought for that album—it wasn’t supposed to be released. There is something about a struggle and its brilliant for all those reasons and many more.
This is really hard—any of those Innervisions, Fullfillingness’ First Finale and Talking Book from Stevie Wonder. Voodoo by D’Angelo because it’s one of the most complete albums I’ve heard and Jaco Pastorius’ debut Jaco. I like debut albums where I can feel they’ve put their entire self into the moment and it hits the mark. Same thing with Meshell Ndegeocello when she did Plantation Lullabies—it was like, “oh wow!” There was a musical journey, and you could even feel the physical journey and the lyrics were raw statements that grabbed you.
Well thank you so much, it has been a joy. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today and hopefully we’ll see each other round the block somewhere!
You are more than welcome, brother.
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