"Biko" is an anti-apartheid protest song by the English rock musician Peter Gabriel. It was released by Charisma Records as a single from Gabriel's eponymous third studio album in 1980.
The song is a musical eulogy, inspired by the death of the black South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in police custody on 12 September 1977. Gabriel wrote the song after hearing of Biko's death on the news. Influenced by Gabriel's growing interest in African musical styles, his recording of it carries a sparse two-tone beat played on Brazilian drum and vocal percussion, in addition to a distorted guitar, and a synthesised bagpipe sound. The lyrics, which include phrases in Xhosa, describe Biko's death and the violence under the apartheid government. The song is book-ended with recordings of songs sung at Biko's funeral: the album version begins with "Ngomhla sibuyayo" and ends with "Senzeni Na?", while the single versions end with "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika".
"Biko" reached No. 38 on the British charts, and was positively received, with critics praising the instrumentation, the lyrics, and Gabriel's vocals. A 2013 commentary called it a "hauntingly powerful" song, while review website AllMusic described it as a "stunning achievement for its time". It was banned in South Africa, where the government saw it as a threat to security. "Biko" was a personal landmark for Gabriel, becoming one of his most popular songs and sparking his involvement in human rights activism. It also had a huge political impact, and along with other contemporary music critical of apartheid, is credited with making resistance to apartheid part of Western popular culture. It inspired musical projects such as Sun City, and has been called "arguably the most significant non-South African anti-apartheid protest song".
Background Bantu Stephen Biko was an anti-apartheid activist who was a founding member of the South African Students' Organisation in 1968 and the Black People's Convention in 1972. Through these groups and other activities he promoted the ideas of the Black Consciousness movement, and became a prominent member of the resistance to apartheid in the 1970s. The government of South Africa placed a banning order on him in 1973, preventing him from leaving his hometown, meeting with more than one person, publishing his writing, and speaking in public. In August 1977 Biko was arrested for breaking his banning order.
After his arrest Biko was held in custody in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, for several days, during which he was interrogated. During his interrogation he was severely beaten by some of the policemen questioning him. He suffered severe injuries (including to his brain) and died soon afterward, on 12 September 1977. News of his death spread quickly, and became a symbol of the abuses perpetrated under the apartheid government. Biko's position as an individual who had never been convicted of a crime led to the death being reported in the international press; he thus became one of the first anti-apartheid activists widely known internationally.
Several musicians wrote songs about Biko, including Tom Paxton, Peter Hammill, Steel Pulse, and Tappa Zukie. British musician Peter Gabriel, who heard of Biko's death through the BBC's coverage of the event, was moved by the story and began researching his life, based on which he wrote a song about the killing. This coincided with Gabriel becoming interested in African musical styles, which influenced his third solo album Peter Gabriel (1980), also known as Melt, on which the song "Biko" was ultimately included. Gabriel was also influenced to write the song through his association with politically inclined new-wave musician Tom Robinson; Robinson is said to have encouraged Gabriel to release the piece when Gabriel began to have doubts. Though there were other political songs on the album, "Biko" was the only piece that was explicitly a protest song.
Music and lyrics
Gabriel crafted the basic track for "Biko" in one month, and spent around one year refining the lyrics. The song begins in a manner similar to a news story, saying "September '77/Port Elizabeth, weather fine". The next lines mention "police room 619", the room in the police station of Port Elizabeth in which Biko was beaten. The English lyrics are broken up by the Xhosa phrase "Yila Moja" (also transliterated "Yehla Moya") meaning "Come Spirit": the phrase has been read as a call to Biko's spirit to join the resistance movement, and as a suggestion that though Biko was dead, his spirit was still alive.
The tone of the song shifts after the first verse, growing more defiant, and the second verse of the song criticises the violence under apartheid, with Gabriel singing about trying to sleep but being able to "only dream in red" because of his anger at the death of black people. The lyrics of the third verse seek to motivate the listener: "You can blow out a candle/But you can't blow out a fire/Once the flames begin to catch/The wind will blow it higher", suggesting that though Biko is dead, the movement against apartheid would continue. The lyrics express a sense of outrage, not only at the suffering of people under apartheid, but at the fact that that suffering was often forgotten or denied.
Gabriel incorporated three songs by other composers into his recording. The album version of the songs start with an excerpt from the South African song "Ngomhla sibuyayo" and ends with a recording of the South African song "Senzeni Na?", as sung at Biko's funeral. These recordings were captured on a cassette by an English reporter who attended Biko's funeral and lent to Gabriel. The 7- and 12-inch single versions ended instead with an excerpt from "Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika", a song which would later become South Africa's National Anthem. The German version of the song began and ended with "Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika". The recording ends with a double drum beat reminiscent of gun shots that cuts off the singers at the funeral, seen as representing a repressive government.
The recording at the beginning of the song fades into a two-toned percussion, played on a Brazilian Surdo drum, described by Gabriel as the "spine of the piece". "Biko" makes use of a "hypnotic" drum beat throughout the song, influenced strongly by African rhythms Gabriel had heard. Gabriel would credit the soundtrack LP Dingaka with influencing the percussion of the track. Music scholar Michael Drewett writes that Gabriel tried to create an "exotic" African beat "without really approximating the sound he imitated", thus creating a "pseudo-African" beat. The tune is punctuated with vocal percussive sounds that have a "primordial" feeling, combining Gaelic and African influences. The drums are overlaid with an artificially distorted two-chord guitar sound, which fades out briefly during the vocal percussion, before returning during the first verse. Gabriel also experimented with beating in the synth drones, which sustain on the A note at slightly different frequencies.
The first verse describing Biko's death is followed by a distinct chord change before the Xhosa invocation "Yehla Moya". The sound of bagpipes, created with a synthesiser, enters the song during the interlude between the verses. Played in a "mournful" minor key, they have been variously described as creating a "funeral" and a "militaristic" atmosphere. The bagpipes continue alongside the drums and guitar through the second verse, followed by an interlude identical to the first. A snare drum is also added to the sound for the second and third verses. The third verse concludes with a non-verbal chant following the chord progression of the song, while the climax is a chorus of male voices, accompanied by bagpipes and drums.
Recording Gabriel provided lead vocals and piano. The guitarist for "Biko" was David Rhodes, Gabriel's longtime collaborator. Other participants included Jerry Marotta on drums, Phil Collins on surdo, Larry Fast on synths and synthesised bagpipes, and Dave Ferguson on screeches, who was a member of Random Hold with Rhodes. Commenting on the screech noise, Gabriel said that Ferguson's part was processed with an Echoplex and that the end result was "one of the most haunting sounds that I've ever heard."
The musical origins of the song began with an African rhythm that Gabriel loaded into a small PAiA Electronics electronic drum box introduced by Fast. Gabriel said that the rhythmic starting point informed his decision to create relatively simple lyrics and melodic accompaniment. Fast added some synth drones using a Moog synthesizer and created the sounds of synthesised bagpipes by detuning some pulse wave drones with an Eventide harmonizer. Rhodes played his guitar parts on a Fender Jazzmaster utilising drone tones that primarily alternates between the musical notes of A and D.
Release "Biko" was included on Gabriel's third solo album Peter Gabriel III (1980) (a.k.a. Melt) released by Charisma Records in 1980. At seven and one-half minutes, it was the album's longest song. The track was later included on his 1990 compilation Shaking the Tree: Sixteen Golden Greats.
In the United Kingdom, Charisma Records released "Biko" as the third single from Gabriel's third self-titled album. Gabriel donated the proceeds from both versions of the single to the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. These donations would total more than 50,000 pounds. The B-side of the 7" version contained Gabriel's version of the Ndebele folk song "Shosholoza", while the 12" version also carried a German vocal version of Gabriel's 1977 track "Here Comes the Flood". Gabriel had first heard "Shosholoza" on the Dingaka soundtrack and credited the song's arrangers, Basil Gray and Bertha Egnos, as co-writers of his version, which was recorded at Crescent Studios in Bath, Somerset.
"Biko" was featured prominently in "Evan", the penultimate episode of the first season of the American television show Miami Vice in 1985. Despite being banned by the SABC at the time, the song was not censored when the episode aired in South Africa, allowing many there to hear it for the first time."Biko" was released as a single in 1980 and reached No. 38 on the British charts. The 1987 live version reached No. 49 in the UK. Soon after its release, a copy of "Biko" was seized by South African customs and submitted to the Directorate of Publications, which banned the song and the album on which it featured for being critical of apartheid, calling it "harmful to the security of the State". Thus, despite enduring popularity outside South Africa, it had no presence within the country.
Critical reception The song received strongly positive responses from critics, and it was frequently cited as the highlight of the album. Phil Sutcliffe in Sounds magazine said the song was "so honest you might even risk calling it truth". Music Week called the 1987 live recording of "Biko" a "powerful" rendition. Music website AllMusic called "Biko" a "stunning achievement for its time", and went on to say that "It's odd that such a bleak song can sound so freeing and liberating". Writing in 2013, Mark Pedelty would say that "Biko" "stood out for its unusual instrumentation (bagpipes and synthesiser), haunting vocals, and funerary chant," and credited Gabriel with doing a "masterful job of creating catalytic imagery and getting out of the way". Music scholar Michael Drewett wrote that the lyrics skillfully engaged the listener by moving from a specific story to a call for action. In 2016, Gabriel's biographer Durrell Bowman ranked "Biko" as among Gabriel's 11 most popular songs.