I am of mixed parentage, a mixture of Black African and White European roots. Growing up I was educated musically by my fathers’ love of Black music and followed the history and trend in Black music, from the 1970s brass and acoustic days to the development of electronic drum machines and keyboards becoming more popular in Black music with the start of electro. My house was always full of electronic things; oscilloscopes, broken circuitry boards, soldering irons, hi-fi equipment, and Black music records / cassettes everywhere, in every cupboard, attic and living room.
I remember my father playing Francois Kevorkian engineered disco records at home in the late 1970s and 20 something years later I released 3 Ep records on his legendary Wave records label from NYC.
It was a similar experience with my father also playing Shakatak records at home and later myself some 20 something years later releasing an Album and 20 singles for the drummers sons record label on Freerange records.
It was an evolutionary thing and music was always and is always around me. I was fortunate enough to have friends back in the day who had the money to buy bits of equipment. At the age of 18 I was working for a top guy who was white and was a similar age to my dad who had lots of amazing Black music albums from the 70s that were real rare, like Eugene Mcdaniels as well as classic George Duke albums. After work around the time of 1988 he would invite me over to his home and we would make house beats. He also would bring me along with him and introduce me to many of the top Manchester recording studios of the time.