Kele Okereke (Bloc Party) part 1

Today's subject is a man who is black and gay, who found success in a genre that was welcoming to neither.

Kelechukwu "Kele" Okereke (born 13 October 1981, in Liverpool, England to Roman Catholic Igbo Nigerian parents), is best known as the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of the Indie Rock band Bloc Party. He's also successful as an EDM (Electronic Dance Music) solo artist. On the topics of race and sexuality in the contemporary music scene, he has a lot to say:

"The topics of race and sexuality have never been far from the public discussion of me as an artist, something that at times I have found hard to deal with. The world of Indie Rock is a world that prides itself on fetishisation: Bands refer to bands past, who in turn referred to bands past, from the Beatles to Oasis to the Arctic Monkeys, everything is part of a lineage. That was something I am always trying to subvert with Bloc Party. We quickly identified that there was a conservatism in Indie Rock, a purism that seem to belie quite a dangerous logic. Rock music is one of the few areas in music where it seems diversity is not to be encouraged. Can anyone remember the last time a major British music magazine put a non-white face on its cover? When Bloc Party started, we were told that things would be hard for us because Indie Rock was a predominantly straight white male world, so we were as surprised as any that our records charted and our tours sold out. We realized that the fans of music didn't seem to have a problem with the color of my skin or sexual orientation, it was Rock journalists, always white male Rock journalists that seemed to have an issue with it."

"From 2004-2006, in every interview I was asked what it felt like to be a black musician making Indie music - the subtext always being that this was not a genre for the likes of people like me. In 2014 we see that there there are plenty of out gay musicians making music, from Sam Smith to the XX, but back in 2005 there was a dogged insistence for me to clarify my sexuality in the media, which culminated in Q, one the UK's biggest music magazines outing me. Coming out for any artist is a delicate experience and as a 20-year-old coming to terms with life in the spotlight, not being able to come out on my own terms was a painful experience."

"It was around this same time that I started DJing again. I had done it for fun as a teen, but now I had a purpose. After making The Boxer, I learned how to make music that I could play in my DJ sets and those ideas went on to become the Heartbreaker EP. It was suddenly like a whole world opened up for me. I started DJing every weekend, all over Europe, the States, Australia, and wherever I went it seemed like a shift was taking place. Kids who had grown up with my music were also experiencing a desire for other sounds. The interviews that I did focused on my transition as a musician, the DJs I met on the road were awesome, not at all combative like rival Indie bands. In this world, my race and sexuality were not a problem to be hinted at. They were to be celebrated. I think that's in part due to the prevalence of black and gay working DJs, but also as highlighted by Luis-Manuel Garcia's excellent article for Resident Advisor, house music "was born from gay people of color sweating their asses off at 5AM in a Chicago warehouse". No wonder the scene has been more receptive to me as a musician than the world of Indie Rock."

But we're getting ahead of ourselves: let's rewind to the start of Bloc Party.

Russell Lissack (lead guitar, keyboards), and Kele Okereke (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards, sampler), first met in 1998 in London. They bumped into each other again in 1999 at Reading Festival and decided to form a band. Bassist Gordon Moakes joined after answering an advert in NME, and drummer Matt Tong joined after an audition. After going through a variety of names, such as Union, The Angel Range, and Diet, the band settled on Bloc Party in September 2003, a play on block party.

They released their first single, She's Hearing Voices, supposedly about "a paranoid schizophrenic", a friend of frontman Kele Okereke.

The band got their break after Okereke went to a Franz Ferdinand concert in 2003, and gave a copy of She's Hearing Voices to both lead singer Alex Kapranos and BBC Radio 1 DJ Steve Lamacq. Lamacq subsequently played the song on his radio show, labelling the track "genius", and invited them to record a live session for the show. The buzz generated off the back of the single led to another release, Banquet/Staying Fat, in May 2004. It was their first single to chart on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks where it came in at number 34, and is often credited as their breakthrough single in North America. It was #31 in NME's top 100 tracks of the decade, and was number 54 in Triple J's Hottest 100 of all time. It peaked at #13 on the UK singles chart. Here's Banquet:

Little Thoughts was their next single, peaking at #38 in the UK.

Next single, Helicopter, did even better, reaching #26 in the UK.

All these songs were included in there debut album, Silent Alarm, which was released to widespread critical acclaim in February 2005. The album peaked at #3 in the UK (platinum), and at #3 in Ireland (gold). It also went gold in Australia and silver in France.

So Here We Are, a slower song, was their next single, peaking at #5 in the UK, their second biggest hit overall there.

So Here We Are was a double A-side with Positive Tension:

Pioneers peaked at #18 in the UK. Here's the animated video:

... While Two More Years peaked at #7:

To conclude with the first album, here's a song that wasn't a single, but I liked it: it's called Blue Light.

Their second studio album came out in January 2007. It was called A Weekend in the City and peaked at #2 in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and Belgium, #5 in Germany and New Zealand, #7 in Canada, #10 in France and #12 in the US and Austria.

Bloc Party worked to craft an album that distanced them from the conventional guitar band set-up by incorporating more electronically processed beats and additional instrumentation. Computer programs were extensively used to enrich and amend recorded takes, while a string sextet was hired to perform on some of the tracks. The subject matter of frontman and chief lyricist Kele Okereke's lyrics for A Weekend in the City covers issues such as drug use, sexuality, and terrorism. The album's three original singles, The Prayer, I Still Remember, and Hunting for Witches, address these themes respectively.

Bloc Party's new musical directions and more forthright lyrics either impressed or alienated critics. Reviewers generally treated A Weekend in the City as an important stepping stone for the band members in their quest for musical maturity, while The Guardian included it in its list of the "1000 Albums To Hear Before You Die".

First single, The Prayer, addressing drug use, became their biggest hit ever. It made #4 in the UK, #18 in Ireland, and #20 in Australia.

Follow-up single, I Still Remember, is the most relevant to our theme. Kele Okereke talked about the song at some length in his January 2007 The Observer interview, responding to questions as to whether the song had an autobiographical nature:

"Not really ... I guess, partially. [Can we call it a gay love story?] Yeah, but is it a love story? It's one person longing for somebody they can't really have. But it's not consummated. It's not a mutual thing."

"This is probably a contentious issue, but I swear that I could always see [male homosexual attraction] in people, in the way that guys would need to be touching other guys. You could see there was something they couldn't say aloud. And I saw it when I was at school. And I guess I Still Remember is an attempt at trying to confront that. ... I know from my own experiences that a lot of heterosexual boys had feelings or experiences when they were younger. And that's not really ever spoken about, that un-spoken desire."

"Not two gay boys... but the idea of two straight boys having an attraction, or there being an attraction that's unspeakable - that was the idea of that song."

Here are the lyrics:

I, I still remember

How you looked that afternoon.

There was only you.

You said "it's just like a full moon".

Blood beats faster in our veins

We left our trousers by the canal

And our fingers, they almost touched

You should have asked me for it

I would have been brave

You should have asked me for it

How could I say no?

And our love could have soared

Over playgrounds and rooftops

Every park bench screams your name

I kept your tie

I've gone wherever you wanted

And on that teachers' training day

We wrote our names on every train

Laughed at the people off to work

So monochrome and so lukewarm

And I can see our days are becoming nights.

I could feel your heartbeat across the grass.

We should have run.

I would go with you anywhere.

I should have kissed you by the water

You should have asked me for it

I would have been brave

You should have asked me for it

How could I say no?

And our love could have soared

Over playgrounds and rooftops

Every park bench screams your name

I kept your tie

I would let you if you asked me

I still remember

Here's the song:

Kreuzberg, an album track, is an account of promiscuity in the Berlin area of the same name. The lyrics:

Saturday night in East Berlin

We took the U-Bahn to the East Side Gallery

I was sure I'd found love with this one lying with me

Crying again in the old bahnhof

I

I have decided

At twenty-five

That something must change

After sex

The bitter taste

Been fooled again

The search continues

The song:

The words to Where Is Home? begin at the funeral of Christopher Alaneme, a black teenager stabbed to death in Kent in April 2006 in a racially motivated attack. Okereke has described him as a "cousin" due to their Nigerian mothers' close friendship. The track castigates right-wing newspapers for perpetuating a hysterical fear of black youths in hoodies, an action which often leads to opportunities being denied to the Black British community at large.

Populist media is also the target of Hunting for Witches (with the right-wing tabloid Daily Mail being singled out for criticism), whose subject matter is terrorism, namely the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Okereke has stated, "I guess the point about the song for me is post-September 11th, the media has really traded on fear and the use of fear in controlling people."

The song was the album's third single, peaking at #22 in the UK.

Flux is featured on the re-released version of A Weekend in the City and on the North American version of their third album Intimacy. It peaked at #8 in the UK.

We've already discussed a lot, so we'll leave the next 3 Bloc Party albums, as well as Kele's solo work, for tomorrow.