I have been an artist and World percussionist for many years. Music is at the very heart of my life, my home and my family, whether I'm digging earth, painting or hanging out with my children, music is there as an ally and a friend.

Although I am a percussionist, rhythm hasn't always come easy for me. It wasn't part of my life as a child, neither were the colours of dreams to be expressed through art or the melodies to be expressed through a poem or a song.

All of this and so much more was to change with my first short visit to Africa, in a dusty compound where music was played, stories told and food cooked. A place where children were free to play and grand-mothers free to sing.

It changed too when I saw the colours of India, when I smelt her poverty and saw the workers toil her land.

It changed for me in England under a star-lit sky, by a glowing fire where stories of childhood were told, songs of the heart sung.

It changed with the birth of each of my own children and it changed when friends I'd known for forty years revealed their hidden pain, or together we spoke for the first time of the abuses of our own childhood.

Touched by the World, there was now something very real to sing

about.

The songwriter in me had begun to emerge.

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Songs for People and Planet really came of age during the time I lived in Brazil. The everyday realities of people, in their efforts to survive the harsh and beautiful landscape in which I was living, had a profound and lasting impact on me and on my music.

During this time a small melodic kalimba became one of my most cherished instruments upon which I began crafting songs inspired by the deeply rewarding and challenging experience of living in the threatened eco-system of the Brazilian Savannah. The stories that the local people told of their lives and of the hopes and the dreams they had for their families and for the Savannah upon which they depended had found expression through my songs.

Now fifteen years on and how the World has changed! The common stories for so many around the world are the same stories as those of the Brazilian Savannah, only now we are all living in a threatened eco-system of the world. We cannot wait another 40 years before we speak of the abuses and injustices that have led us to where we are today. Let it not be that we are all condemned to live in a depleted landscape, an economic wasteland, or a Gaza of the World.

NEXT AMONG MANY PERFOMANCE @ STOKE THE FIRE
Stoke Newington, London
5th February 2012
more details soon!