B That’s where I realise it you see
We accept all this and we do our best to get to the people who don’t usually get the opportunity to see this kind of music, you know. So we use all the aspects of what’s available to us to make sure that the music goes out to the people.
CM Yeah, I know because I have read a comment which stayed in my mind about you feeling like less of an entertainer and more of a healer. And I thought that was fantastic because that kind of vibe seems to be returned to you and the band a lot from comments I read on the website all the time.
I meet these people – so-called “fans” who I’d like to call my friends. And basically these people come to you and they let you know this. They’ll tell you things like “your music was the soundtrack of my life while my brother was dying of AIDS and he wanted me to be here today. I didn’t really know your band until I was caring for my brother in the hospital and he made sure before passing that I should come and meet you and I’m so glad that I have done”.
When you get things like that happen in your life – when a kid tells you that you’ve actually been their direction, their inspiration, I feel the same way as I felt when I was younger. I feel that people like Stevie Wonder brought me a healing, brought me a teaching. Gil Scott-Heron made me realise a bunch of things in life – he may be hurting himself right now and hopefully his music and other people may be able to heal him.
CM So when you’re in front of some of these audiences, a lot of the music’s very danceable but it’s much more than a party going on out there isn’t it?
I fell in love with vocal performances from a young age
B Well, I know the party’s important because I’m a clubber. I used to spend the money that I earned cleaning toilets and working in factories across the UK to go to Paradise Garage, to go and check out the vibes in the clubs in New York, hear the DJ’s and hear the new records. Or I’d hang out with people like Chris Hill and Froggy in the UK and see what was going on, what was new on the scene…
So this kind of attraction towards the dance and at the same time this attraction towards people that I have from being an island kid, it all noivas francГЄs de correio kind of works side by side and I think if I didn’t embrace all of that fully I would be denying myself what I’ve been put on this planet for.
CM Well, the dance thing to me is very central and I and I don’t go clubbing now but, basically, any time I go listening to new hi-fi I take “Tribes” with me and if I’m not dancing in the shop I don’t buy the gear…
I’m returning to something I really wanted to ask you: one of the reasons I use that CD and I play it a lot is for the great vocal performances out of everyone who appears on the Incognito albums. I wonder how you do it – is it just the singers that you work with or is there some freedom you give them that makes them produce these performances?
B I think it’s a mixture of both really. The music that I was exposed to, from Edith Piaf when I was young, Jim Reeves and stuff, they weren’t really the area where I would work but I was always attracted to how the voice sounded on the record and how it connected. Watching my aunties listening to these songs, feeling the emotion that they felt, I knew that it was what they were singing but it was also partly tone.
