Labi Siffre

Labi Siffre neither had huge international hits, nor broke sensational chart records. He caused no drug or sex scandals - in fact he was with the same man for 49 years. He isn't a superstar, he is a thinking artist, an openly gay singer who has built a small cult following with works that deal squarely with homophobia and racism. In addition to his nine albums, the multi-talented Siffre has written three books of poetry and has also written for the stage. He isn't a diva, he is a regular guy. As much as I enjoy writing about flamboyant, larger-than-life personalities like Bowie, Elton, Little Richard or Cole Porter, sometimes I feel like honouring the less flashy artist, who happens to be talented and does his job well. Hello Mr. Siffre!

Labi, born Claudius Afolabi Siffre in London/1945 was the fourth of five children to a Nigerian father and a British mother of Barbadian-Belgian descent. Despite his Catholic education Siffre has stated that he has always been an atheist. In an interview to The New Humanist he describes his life in relation to religion:

"With neither my permission nor my understanding I was baptised and confirmed a Catholic. My parents didn’t go to church but on Sundays made my brother Kole and I go. By the time I was eleven we went, with the collection money, to a coffee bar instead. I followed Kole into a Catholic monastery school, St Benedict’s in Ealing. The first words I heard from the teaching staff was a disgusted “Oh no, not another Siffre”. I was seven. I would be there for almost eleven years. We were taught by monks (History = the evil of The Dissolution of the Monasteries) and by secular teachers.

I’ve always been an atheist. I’ve never had religious belief. Pre-teens, I assumed God was in the same make-believe category as Father Christmas; a game of pretend between children and grown-ups. Sometime in my early teens I realised, with incredulity, bemusement and regular bouts of “No, they can’t be serious” that they are serious. They really believe in an omnipotent man who lives in the sky, gave us rules by which to live, does magic tricks of life and death and, though all knowing, is excused responsibility for the consequences of his creative actions."

In 1964, at the age of 19, he met the love of his life Peter John Carver Lloyd. They remained together until Lloyd's death in 2013, having entered a civil partnership in 2005, as soon as this was possible in the UK. In the same interview, given a year before his partner's death, he also talks about gay marriage:

"I favour it. In time it will help heterosexuals realize that love is love is love is love and the responsibilities inherent in love, regardless of sexuality, should and must be acknowledged by the state. That inclusion will encourage the ideal that all are accepted as valid and equal members of society, and thus share equal responsibilities.

I have never felt welcome in the land of my birth. In December 2005 after 41 years of love, my partner, Peter Lloyd, and I entered a Civil Partnership. We gained, for example, the legal right for him to attend my funeral or for me to attend his. The alienation lessened. State recognition of equal validity in love through the equal right to marriage would further lessen that alienation."

He also shares his views on how straight people view gay men:

"Heterosexuals in general are comforted by thinking they can tell if someone is gay, or not. In order to support that delusion they insist that gay characters be presented to them (the majority audience) in a way that they, in their arrogance, will accept as gay. Primarily this means camp (or being a depraved killer who loves opera or strokes his cat in a sinister way). In that regard little has changed. In terms of sexuality, the challenge has always been for heterosexuals to display more backbone."

Siffre played jazz guitar at a jazz club in Soho in the 1960s as part of a band. His top three all-time musicians/bands are The Beatles, Glen Gould & Charlie Parker. His top 3 all-time composers are Beethoven, Stravinsky, Schönberg. Other influences include Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzerald, Billie Holiday, Betty Carter, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Errol Garner, Jimmy Reed, Wes Montgomery, Ahmed Jamal, the MJQ, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, Stan Tracey, Gil Evans, Gary Burton, Mel Tormé, Ray Bryant, Carmen McCrae, Jimmy Giuffre and Gerry Mulligan.

His first album, with his name as the title, came out in 1970. It was an impressive first album. We'll hear two songs from it: first, I Don't Know What's Happened To The Kids Today is sung from the point of view of the older generation:

Love Song for Someone is a tender love song:

His second album came out in 1971 and was called The Singer and the Song. The opening song is a jazzy love song that starts out playfully and climaxes thoughtfully:

Bless The Telephone, a beautiful song, was interpolated by RJD2 for his song "Making Days Longer" (2004):

Crying Laughing Loving Lying (1972) was his most successful album in the UK. It contained It Must Be Love, a hit single at #14:

A few years later it was covered by Madness and was an even bigger hit (#4 UK, #33 US):

The next single, Crying Laughing Loving Lying did even better in the UK, peaking at #11:

Also in this album, My Song was sampled by Kanye West in his song I Wonder (2007):

From that same year, his song Watch Me made #29 in the UK chart:

His next album was For the Children (1973). Prayer was one of the songs:

The Children Of Children was another:

The next album was Remember My Song (1975). The opening song was I Got The. The song was sampled by Eminem (and his producer Dr. Dre) in My Name Is (1998). Siffre had something to say about it:

"Dissing the victims of bigotry – women as bitches, homosexuals as faggots – is lazy writing. Diss the bigots not their victims. I denied sample rights till that lazy writing was removed. I should have stipulated “all versions” but at that time knew little about rap’s “clean” & “explicit” modes, so they managed to get the lazy lyric on versions other than the single and first album."

Here's Labi's song:

The Vulture was also in this album:

Disillusioned by the limited success of his albums and fed up with the treatment of Black artists by the British music industry ("The insistence that one should be “ethnic” is endemic, irritating and insulting"), Siffre went in self-imposed retirement. He came out of it in 1985, when he saw a television film from apartheid South Africa showing a white soldier shooting at black children. In response to it, he wrote Something Inside So Strong which, when released in 1987, became his biggest hit, peaking at #4 in the UK:

Lovers was also in this album:

Man of Reason was released in 1991. The album opened with City Of Dreams:

Also in the album was Sensible Betrayal In The City, a song on sexual politics:

His last song album, in 1998, was appropriately titled The Last Songs. The songs of this album don't appear to be on youtube, but they can be found on spotify. It's really worth listening to: Labi Siffre - Last Songs

In addition to his music, Labi Siffre has published essays, the stage and TV play Deathwrite and three volumes of poetry - Nigger, Blood On The Page and Monument. A renaisssance man indeed.