[210x215]
Я прочитала эту статью и так и не поняла : Келе гей или бисексуал!?
Kele Okereke is tired. It was a late one last night. Lasted until morning, in fact. He's sleep deprived and a little scratchy as he walks through the streets of Shoreditch, east London, on this September afternoon. Unfortunately for his mangled brain, the Bloc Party frontman has loads to do today.
He and the rest of the band - Russell Lissack (guitar), Gordon Moakes (bass), Matt Tong (drums) - are in the final stages of mixing their second album. There's sleeve imagery to be decided upon: Okereke is looking at work by German photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg. He likes one of her aerial images of west London's Westway, the road lit by the orange-sodium glow of street lamps, the adjacent five-a-side pitches brilliantly spotlit. The photograph will be perfect for the band's new record. Entitled A Weekend in the City, it's a quasi-concept album detailing Okereke's thoughts on life in London in the 21st century. 'East London is a vampire/It sucks the joy right out of me' - the declamatory climax of the album's opening track 'Song For Clay (Disappear Here)' is but one of the many startling images contained in Okereke's lyrics.
Now, as he heads to the pub, Okereke must face up to his first interview in quite some time. He's never been the most comfortable of public speakers. His stammer is probably only a very small part of this; he may be given to the odd grand statement, but Okereke hardly radiates the confidence and swagger we normally associate with the singer of a rock band.
'That's partly true,' he concedes, before adding, 'but the thing that makes frontmen most attractive to me is half-ego, half-vulnerability. You want to see that they're scared. You want to see that they're tapping into something that is frightening to them. I don't think the bravado of frontmen a la that guy from Kasabian or the one from Razorlight really resonates with people, that super-exaggerated arrogance. Perhaps now [it does], but they're gonna be a footnote in history in 10 years' time. There's no battle in them. There's no conflict.'
Kele Okereke, on the other hand, knows a lot about conflict. There are his issues over home and race - the 25-year-old grew up in Essex but was born in Liverpool, to Nigerians who came to the city in the late-Seventies to study. Mum is a midwife, Dad a molecular biologist. He was 'saddened' by the struggles of his parents, with their strong accents, 'in a system that is institutionally prejudiced'. No, Okereke will say with some vehemence, he is not proud to be British. But nor does he consider Nigeria, which he last visited when he was 14 (his strongest memories are of begging on the streets and police corruption) as somewhere he belongs.
There are his ongoing concerns about personal safety. As a black teenager growing up in Essex he 'always felt something nasty could happen in the pub'. On the streets of Bethnal Green, where he now lives, he feels that racist aggravation is, daily, a heartbeat away.
There are his tensions over religion - he was raised in a devout Catholic household and was only able to stop attending church when he left home, aged 20. 'And that's absurd,' he says. 'I never saw the sense in going to this building once a week and sitting there for an hour bored out of your wits to hear someone pontificate. Then to go back to your life during the weekdays and be as mean-spirited as everyone else...'
He's up and down about drugs, too. The video for the album's first single, 'The Prayer', is set in a club and features imagery - rippling faces, wobbly bodies, sweat - designed to suggest that Okereke and his bandmates are high. New song 'On' contains references to 'rolled-up twenties ... you make my tongue loose, I am hopeful and stutter-free, I can charm them all ...'
'Cocaine is such a seductive drug,' Okereke comments. 'In a time when so many people feel they can't communicate or feel hemmed in, I can see the appeal of cocaine to young professionals who are doing jobs they don't really like. It's that extra kick that will make you put up with shitty, obnoxious people when you go out ... I tried not to make ['On'] a moralising song about using cocaine, more an explanation of the appeal, and of the comedown.'
And then, most problematic of all, there are Kele Okereke's issues with sexuality. During the many interviews Bloc Party conducted during 2005, as their debut album Silent Alarm went from critical rave to million-selling commercial hit, from Mercury nominee to NME's Album of the Year, the subject of whether Okereke is or isn't gay was the pink elephant in the room. In a musical form that is usually beerily, boorishly white, male and heterosexual, Okereke was a refreshingly different kind of indie icon. The
Читать далее...