Peter Gabriel, From Genesis to Growing Up (review)

Although there has been a blossoming in popular music studies over the past two decades, much pop music writing remains in the purview of non-music specialists. As a result, some edited volumes of pop music essays can tend towards the overly abstract and theoretical, without a grounding in the music. This can result in collections which are of limited use to music scholars, as authors engage critically with politics, lyrics, media framing, reception, or other post-modern inquiries, while discussions of music become a corollary.

Peter Gabriel, From Genesis to Growing Up, succeeds first and foremost because it places Gabriel’s music (or performance of it in concert or video) in the foreground of almost every essay. This includes both close readings of single songs and wider examinations that stretch across his repertoire. Editors Michael Drewett, Sarah Hill, and Kimi Kärki have curated a strong, interdisciplinary volume that focuses on a single multifaceted artist, using a wide variety of analytical methods and theoretical approaches. Additionally, most of this volume’s authors base their arguments on a well-reasoned and clear understanding of various theoretical (philosophical, sociological, anthropological) frameworks, although their conclusions are sometimes unexpected.

The essays are grouped into three sections by methodological approach. The first section is titled “Identity and Representation,” which “attempts to address the many facets of Gabriel’s self which he has revealed on record and through his music videos” (p. 4). The second section is concerned with “Politics and Power,” and is largely focused on Gabriel’s role in the South African anti-apartheid struggle through his song “Biko,” released in 1980, as well as his other endeavors in the genre of world music. The final section deals with “Production and Performance,” highlighting certain aspects of Gabriel’s music in live performance and his innovations in the studio. As a result of this organizational scheme, some articles on the same subject (for example, the video for “Sledgehammer”) are placed at opposite ends of the book.

The middle part of the volume, “Politics and Power,” is the most cohesive, in part because the essays deal with a relatively narrow slice of Gabriel’s output; namely, his world music songs and specifically “Biko.” However, this cohesion seems staged for the book, since the first three of these four chapters were previously published elsewhere. The final essay, Dave Laing’s “ ‘Hand-made, Hi-tech, Worldwide’: Peter Gabriel and World Music,” is a direct response to the previous essay, a barely edited reprint of chapter 2 from Timothy D. Taylor’s book on world music (Timothy D. Taylor, Global Pop: World Music, World Markets [New York: Routledge, 1997], 39–52). The editors have provided a useful service by collating essays from disparate sources into one place; however, there is very little new scholarship offered in this section.

Still, the editors have created a meaningful recontextualization of these essays by placing them adjacent to one another. Michael Drewett’s “The Eyes of the World Are Watching Now: The Political Effectiveness of ‘Biko’ by Peter Gabriel,” argues that Gabriel’s involvement “did not constitute membership of or strict allegiance to the anti-apartheid movement” (p. 110). This historicization avoids the impulse to “romanticize, essentialize or exalt the part [Gabriel] played in anti-apartheid struggle” (p. 110). Conversely, Ingrid Bianca Byerly reveals how “Biko” became an integral part of the cultural and musical discourse of protest amongst South African activists. Although she acknowledges that “music itself . . . can probably not be considered a sole agent of change” (p. 118), she does place “Biko” around the “tipping point,” or the beginning of the final push towards victory, of the social revolution.

Taylor’s chapter offers an orientalist critique of Gabriel’s world music activities with a hypercritical eye focused on power, production, capital, and appropriation. Laing then defends Gabriel against Taylor’s criticism, calling Taylor’s “homology between...