Season 3, Episode 5: “I Don’t Tell People I’m a Musician" ft Peter One
Narration: I have a vivid memory of being 11 years old, dreaming of becoming a singer, while walking the halls of my middle school in Brooklyn, New York. I couldn’t stop thinking about being a little bit more grown, writing songs and living life from the stage. But even then, I knew some very important details were missing from my picture. Like, how does someone actually become a singer?
As I got older, I saw that making it as a musician almost always included a side hustle. There were barista-singer songwriters, plumber-crooners, scientist-vocalists, and the path I ultimately chose, the organizer-artist. Feed your belly, while feeding your deepest passion.
But this all has another, deeper implication. The folks we encounter in “normal jobs” chances are, they are more than meets the eye. If we ask the right questions, we may find the taxi driver or the grocery store clerk, while we are busy defining them by their dayjobs, have been creating groundbreaking culture . Peter One is an Ivory Coast raised, Nashville based musician and he is one of these people.
My name is Meklit and this is Movement, music and migration, remixed.
Peter One’s story starts in the 1950s in the Ivory Coast. His parents were farmers in an industrial town centered around pineapple plantations and factories.
Peter: They were doing the cans of pineapple slices, juice, jelly, all kind of products from pineapple. All life was around this factory.
Meklit: So I'm trying to imagine myself, in your shoes and I'm thinking, well, in a small industrial town, 50 to 60 miles from the capitol it probably was a very distant dream to be a musician. Am I right?
Peter: Yeah, I wasn't thinking of being a musician until, way later. But I loved music from start. Because my mother was a very great singer. But she wasn't doing that professionally.
Meklit: Yes
Peter: She was just, yeah, just singing home, telling us tales, you know,
Meklit: Mm
Peter: Traditional tales.
Meklit: Mm. Storytelling through the music too.
Peter: Mmhmm yeah
Narration: Peter also heard music in his home on the radio. When he went to high school, he sang sometimes with his friends who had a band, and that inspired him to learn the guitar.
Then one day, he heard The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel on the radio, and that changed everything.
Peter: I remember vividly like it was yesterday,
Meklit: Mm-hmm.
Peter: In the high school we were living on the campus.
Meklit: Mm-hmm.
Peter: And, every morning, wake up at six o'clock, get ready for breakfast, and then go to class. And that morning the weather was a little bit drizzly, and then this song came out
Meklit: Mm.
Peter: On the radio. That's when I heard that music for the first time.
Meklit: What was going through your mind when you were hearing it?
Peter: It took me to somewhere I was at, this kind of music, the guitars, the voices, the effects, I never heard of something like that, you know? It was really, really, really interesting to me. Really interesting. I said, well, that's the kind of music I wanna play.
Meklit: Mm
Peter: That's the kind of music I want to hear. That's the kind of music I want to hear everywhere. Since then, I started working more on the acoustic guitar. Writing my own songs.
Meklit: Yes. Yes absolutely
Peter: That was, that was in 1974. Mm-hmm.
Meklit: What's your relationship to that song now?
Peter: I still love it to death
Narration: But Peter didn’t start making this kind of music professionally until nearly six years after he heard Simon and Garfunkel for the first time.
After high school, at age 17 he moved to the big city of Abidjan to attend college. And there, he met another musician, Jess Sah Bi. They met by chance through Peter's next door neighbor in his dorm, who could hear Peter playing music in the kitchen.
Peter: One day he approached me and say, I've been listening to what you're doing. I have my uncle who plays guitar too. I think you guys can be a really good match.
Meklit: Mm
Peter: Jess Sah Bi was already, a little bit used to the media. To the tv, to the radio. Because he participated a few years earlier. In the national contest. On the tv, yeah.
Meklit: Oh, that's a big deal.
Peter: On the tv station. Yeah. And he had a very good place on that contest. So, he came, he had couple songs already, and we started working on those songs, and that's how where we, we found out we were doing great
Meklit: So you clicked?
Peter: Yeah. He loved the same music too, but we were singing mostly in our language because we are from the same tribe.
Narration: Peter also suggested they sing in French and English. He was inspired by listening to artists like Simon and Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Meklit: And was there a moment that you got sort of serious about music?
Peter: I got serious about music after we released the first album in 1985.
Meklit: Wait, you got serious about music after you released the first album?
Peter: Yes. Yes. I wasn't really planning on being a, you know, a star. No, that wasn't my goal. I was doing music for fun.
Meklit: Got you.
Peter: Because I, on the side, I was a teacher,
Meklit: Oh, I see
Peter: I was a high school teacher. See?
Narration: For five years, Peter was a teacher by day, musician at night and on the weekends, he tried to keep his music life and his teaching life separate.
Peter: when I go to places, I don't tell people that I'm musician. I play music unless I meet musicians.
Meklit: Right, right.
Peter: It's easier that way. I wanna live a simple life like everybody,
Meklit: Was there a time when you would go from like these big stages back into the classroom and what was that like for you?
Peter: Yeah. We had our first live television show in December, 1980. At that time, I was sent to a small town in the western part of the Ivory Coast as a teacher. That was my first year there as a teacher. So it's during that Christmas break that we had that show
So when I came back, when school resume in January, I came back. When everything started, they were waiting for me. They seen me. Yeah. Even
Meklit: Wait, they were dancing for you?
Peter: Yeah, at school. In the school, the, my fellow teachers, even the school master, the director of the high school. Everybody was there waiting for me. We saw you on the tv.
Meklit: Wow.
Peter: So that was really, really, really into happy moment.
Meklit: It was like a double life or something.
Peter: Yeah they didn’t know!
Narration: They used Jess' connections to get these gigs playing live on radio and TV. So before they even recorded any albums, Peter and Jess were playing these high-profile gigs where anyone in the country could tune in. That’s how his students and colleagues found out about his double life.
In 1985, Peter's world became much less simple, when he and Jess Sah Bi put out their duo record, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers.
Peter didn't know that this album would change everything at two very different moments in his life.
The first moment happened pretty much right away.
Peter: Soon as the album was out, people loved it because it was completely different. It was something new. It's something new in the country.
Meklit: That’s right.
Peter: Yeah. We didn't even know that, people would love it this way, this much.
Meklit: Yes. I mean, it's an incredible album. I love it.
Peter: Thank you. So when we released that first album, I start thinking of all the possibilities that are in the music business
Narration: Peter and Jess performed with a full band to stadium-sized audiences in The Ivory Coast, Benin, Burkina Faso and Togo. They performed several times for the president.
They sang about love, pan-African unity, and ending South African apartheid. Their song, African Chant was used by the BBC as theme music when Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
But just like he hadn't seen his stardom coming, Peter didn't expect the next big shift his life would take.
Meklit: So how did you decide to leave Cote D’Ivoire and come to the US?
Peter: The political atmosphere was getting, you know, kind of scary because politicians started getting, I would say brutal. They introduced violence in politics. The other thing is the country was going through some economical difficulty.
Meklit: Mm-hmm.
Peter: I left as somebody who wanna go out, learn, educate myself, get ready, buy my equipment, and come back. That was my plan.
Meklit: yes.
Peter: But the situation didn't get better. It was getting worse and worse and worse.
Meklit: Mmm..
Peter:That's how I decided to stay here.
Narration: Peter immigrated in 1995. First, he lived in New York City, then Delaware. To support himself, he taught high school French.
And the whole time, Peter kept writing songs because his love of music was as strong as ever. But the practicality that was instilled in him way back in his pineapple town was still there.
Peter: Music is a long time investment. I knew that from start. This is not gonna pay right away.
Narration: So when Peter decided to stay in the US, he wanted a job that could give him stability. That’s why he went to nursing school. But becoming a nurse would support Peter's musical life in ways he didn't even anticipate.
He was looking at nursing jobs in the Washington DC area, but then an opportunity came up in Tennessee, about 45 minutes from Nashville, the country music capital of the world. He says it's a miracle that he ended up there.
Peter: before I even knew that this was called country music, I was playing it already, you know?
Meklit: Mm.
Peter: When I started playing guitar, I started playing after some African musician who were playing just acoustic guitar and vocal. It's later, that's when Jess and I, we started playing around people started telling us that what you're doing is country music. That's how knew that it was called country music.
Narration: Country music has been a popular genre in many African countries for decades now. Every Nigerian household I went to in my teenage years had a Kenny Rogers cassette or two in their collection, and Dolly Parton tapes were nearly, but not quite as plentiful. I wonder if that love of country is because the roots of the banjo stretch back through the transatlantic slave trade all the way to a West African lute. Or maybe it’s because a great many country songs, like much of African music, use pentatonic aka five note scales. You can think of it as using the same spices in two different dinner dishes. And then there’s the fact that both musics embrace the vocally plaintive, the emotionally yearning storyteller. The roles match.
But even though Peter loved country music, when he first arrived in the country music capital, Nashville didn't seem to understand what Peter was all about.
Peter: I tried to produce my own album and it didn't really work out because every time I was working with some people, it is like they have some kind of, sort of stereotypes about Africa.
Meklit: Right.
Peter: Okay, lemme tell you about one of them. I went to his studio, I said, okay, this is my demo. I want record two songs. Listen to this demo and find me some musician so we can do that. In one of the songs, I will need somebody who play the horns. He is gonna call somebody who come to me and introduce myself. He say, oh yeah, I listen to your demo. I like it. I'm a really, really good Afrobeat player. I say, okay, Afrobeat, what Afrobeat has to be do with what I'm, what I'm doing.
Meklit: Nothing.
Peter: Nothing. And he came and started playing. He has nothing to do with what I wanted.
Meklit: Wow.
Peter: Nothing. I said, no, that's not what I want. And the guy from the studio who said, who brought him
Meklit: Yes.
Peter: But he's playing African music. I said, okay, you know what? If that's what you think, yeah, let's cancel the deal right here. Because you don't listen to what I'm saying.
Meklit: Yes.
Peter: I know what I want. You're not gonna impose me what you want.
Meklit: No, and, and he's listening to a stereotype that he has in his head, not to the person in front of him.
Peter: Exactly.
Narration: Finally, in 2017 Peter got a call out of the blue. It was someone with more of an appreciation for the music that Peter was actually making.
The person on the other end of the phone was Brian Shimkovitz, founder of a record label called Awesome Tapes from Africa. He wanted to know about Peter's 1985 duo record, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers.
Peter: When he got in touch with me, he told me that he found a tape somewhere in Africa, I think in Ghana or Nigeria. And he started looking for us for, he spent like 10 years before he found us.
Meklit: He spent 10 years looking for you?
Peter: Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's what he told me.
Narration: Awesome Tapes from Africa wanted to re-issue the 1985 album. And in a rhyming moment with what happened over 3 decades earlier, that same album re-launched Peter's music career.
Peter: I never, never thought that things would work that way. Never thought of that.
Meklit: It's so interesting because earlier in the conversation you said that the first time our garden needs its flowers was released. After that release was when you knew you could be a full-time musician, and then the reissue was the moment when you came back to music in your second life as a musician.
Peter: Really. Came back. Really because in the meantime I was still writing songs. I never stopped.
Narration: Our Garden Needs Its Flower's reissue led to a new record deal, so he could finally share the songs he’d been writing in the intervening years.
In 2023 Peter One released, Come Back To Me. Again, he sings in English, French and Gouro.
He co-produced the album with Matt Ross-Spang, who has worked with Al Green and John Prine. And they got that sound Peter was looking for with banjo and pedal steel players from Nashville and even heavyweights like Allison Russel.
The album led to more live shows, even at the iconic Nashville music venue, the Grand Ole Opry. Peter is working on a follow-up album now. And while he does, he's still living that double life, as a musician and a nurse.
Peter: One of the TV channels in Nashville here, they had a program and they interviewed me and they made a little documentary, you know, about musician from other cultures living in Nashville. And so, later one day released that documentary, some of them, my patient, they saw that. They saw that. And when I went there, one of them, a man he say, he said, I saw you on the tv. I said, no, that, that wasn’t me. No, that's you! That's you!
Peter: I said, I said, what? What was it about? You are a musician. You are a musician? I said, no, that's not me. He said, no, that's you. I know. Because like I said, when I'm somewhere, I don't tell people that I'm musician unless I meet musicians, this way I can't live, you know? I can live like everybody else.
Meklit: Mm-hmm. Well the first reason we wanted to talk to you was because I saw a video and I was like, I love this music. And then the second reason I wanted to talk to you was that I really for a long time wanted to tell stories of incredible musicians who have regular jobs because it's actually really more common than our culture, like tends to believe.
For example, like there may be somebody driving a taxi and I know they may have been the dean of their university. You know, you see somebody who is like working construction, they may have owned a big business in their home country or what, you know, and I just, I love the idea of.
It's like an invitation for me for when people see folks who are working, you know, quote unquote regular jobs. Like this may be a cultural treasure. Like, we just have to think bigger, you know? And understand that people are so much more than the role you might see them in at the moment.
Peter: Yeah. Exactly, exactly. I want my legacy. I would, I want people to talk about me as somebody who came from Africa. Was already educated in Africa, came to the US, start from scratch, had a job and continued his dream as a musician. You know?
Meklit: Yes.
Peter: You know?
Meklit: Yes.
Peter: That's what I want, yeah, that's all.
Narration: You can listen to Peter One’s album, Come Back to Me wherever you find your music.
This episode of Movement was produced by Emma Alabaster and myself, Meklit Hadero. Our senior editor is Megan Tan. Our sound designer and co-founder is Ian Coss. Our co-creator and podcast godmother is Julie Caine. Our broadcast partner is The World. We are distributed by PRX.