Speaker 1: So my final guest this afternoon is a musical force
Speaker 1: with roots in Mozambique and rhythm in his soul. Pedro
Speaker 1: Barboso is a singer, songwriter, a guitarist, and a music
Speaker 1: entrepreneur who's been lighting up stages from Pretoria to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I'm told whether you know him from his early days
Speaker 1: with the Fake Leather Blues Band or more recently as
Speaker 1: a solo artist and collaborator. Pedro's unique sounds blend African soul, gospel,
Speaker 1: warmth and heartfelt lyrics across three languages, Portuguese, Spanish and English.
Speaker 1: I've spoken to Pedro before on my show. My first
Speaker 1: time chatting to him this afternoon. Pedro, good to chat
Speaker 1: to you again. I'm very well. I'm very well. Indeed,
Speaker 1: listen that give our listeners a bit of a bit
Speaker 1: of a background to you. Your love for music goes
Speaker 1: back many, many years. Talk to us about some of
Speaker 1: your sort of early musical memories, your early musical inspirations.
Speaker 2: Well, my early music memories. I remember my first big
Speaker 2: show when I was I think I was seventeen years old,
Speaker 2: with a second time going on stage, and we played
Speaker 2: for about six six thousand people. And I was so nervous. Man,
Speaker 2: I was so scared of of of all this crowd,
Speaker 2: and people just kept going like that guy, can you sing? Fact,
Speaker 2: like they're giving me all this this like you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, you're just get even more nervous about this.
Speaker 2: And my guitarist, who was ten years older than me,
Speaker 2: told me, Petro, just just play. I'm doing a sound
Speaker 2: check to it. What do you means, like, just just
Speaker 2: just sing? Just sing any Brian Adams And this is
Speaker 2: a Mozambique and he obviously had a lot more experience
Speaker 2: than me, and he knew that Mozambacas loved Brian Adams
Speaker 2: at that stage. So and my voice being slightly husky,
Speaker 2: I do this and then at like two minutes and
Speaker 2: then this guy goes, oh, but that I can sing,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden I have the crowd and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, thank god, whatever, wow wow. So
Speaker 2: that was like one of the first remember actually, and
Speaker 2: it always stuck with me like like you have this
Speaker 2: this assumption of you, but you know what, you don't
Speaker 2: judge your book ever kind of thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean you mentioned you mentioned Brian Adams,
Speaker 1: but your own that the artists that that inspiration inspired
Speaker 1: you and informed perhaps your your earliest musical memories. What
Speaker 1: what were you listening to? What? What did you grow
Speaker 1: up on? What were your parents listening to? Rather, it's
Speaker 1: a terrible line with Pedro and we've we've just lost him.
Speaker 1: We're going to get him back. We're chatting to Pedro
Speaker 1: Valbosa sing a songwriter, guitarist and music entrepreneur. He's going
Speaker 1: to be joining us back in just a second. We're
Speaker 1: struggling to keep that line clear. We're also going to
Speaker 1: hear one of his latest tracks in just a second,
Speaker 1: called We Are the Light. He's back on now, Pedro,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry we lost you. Just for a second.
Speaker 1: I was asking what was the what was the music
Speaker 1: in your house growing up? What did your folks listen to?
Speaker 2: So it was it was a huge variety. Was from
Speaker 2: Don Jolvi, Michael Bolton, Queen, Brian Adams. Really, I was
Speaker 2: very Johnny Klick. There was a lot of there was
Speaker 2: no limitations that that was the last thing. I think
Speaker 2: That's why I'm so versatile and the music that I
Speaker 2: do was because of that. Actually, what was the.
Speaker 1: Point at which I mean, was it prior to that
Speaker 1: moment on stage where you're having to do your best
Speaker 1: Brian Adams suppression or what was the moment where you thought,
Speaker 1: this is what I want to do for a living,
Speaker 1: this is how I want to spend my time.
Speaker 2: Oh, that was much later at that point. I actually
Speaker 2: I studied. So I studied. I did six months of
Speaker 2: pharmacy and just over a year of marine biology because
Speaker 2: I thought there was no money in music. And my
Speaker 2: parents did tell me I should go study music, and
Speaker 2: I said, no, I don't think there's any money in music.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and then so only when I was twenty
Speaker 2: years old, nineteen twenty that I realized okay, now they
Speaker 2: were right. They were obviously not happy with me about it.
Speaker 1: But you know, and what was that fara into me
Speaker 1: when you decide, okay, this is what I want to
Speaker 1: do and this is how I'm going to make money.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you speak to a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of younger artists today, and I wonder if it's
Speaker 1: the kind of the reality TV generation where they think
Speaker 1: that you go from you know, singing singing at the
Speaker 1: school concert to be to winning American Idol. What what
Speaker 1: was your what did you envisage your career would look like?
Speaker 1: Did you have any idea what it might look like.
Speaker 1: Did you think I could be a session musician, or
Speaker 1: I could be a front man or what? What? What
Speaker 1: was in your mind?
Speaker 2: I don't think at that stage I had any any plans.
Speaker 2: I kind of just I went to study. I came
Speaker 2: to that's when I'm with South Africa. I came here
Speaker 2: to study, and then I went to the States. And
Speaker 2: the States was was a big knock was on my
Speaker 2: reality in terms of music, and I realized how small
Speaker 2: hours and how well I'm not small, I'm big, but
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, side and and and it
Speaker 2: kind of like it was a big step in the
Speaker 2: face and it was a readjustment for me where I realized, Okay,
Speaker 2: I need to work hard. I'm not as good as
Speaker 2: you know. You kind of have unique confidence as a musician,
Speaker 2: and I think I had it, but I also had
Speaker 2: a lot of self criticism that that didn't help, and
Speaker 2: and I wasn't as good as I thought I was.
Speaker 2: And so when I came back from the stat that
Speaker 2: I worked really hard. I wrote a song every day
Speaker 2: to practice myself writing. For a year. I had practiced that,
Speaker 2: and then I went into like joining join, joined, the
Speaker 2: band and started getting more into the live shows because
Speaker 2: I hadn't played much live music prior to that while
Speaker 2: I was studying stuff so.
Speaker 1: So interesting to me.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I spoke to another South African artist a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, Keana Harker, who he was on the Voice,
Speaker 1: and he's he's a huge talent, done here, and he
Speaker 1: had gone he went to go on the cruise ships.
Speaker 1: He went to go and perform on cruise ships. And
Speaker 1: I said, you know, what did you learn from that?
Speaker 1: And he said, exactly as you've just said, I wasn't
Speaker 1: as good as I thought I was. And I just thought,
Speaker 1: what a remarkable, a hugely humbling thing to say, first
Speaker 1: of all, but secondly, he took that information and he
Speaker 1: didn't say it in a bitter way. He said it
Speaker 1: in a kind of and I need to get better,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what you just said. You plowed that
Speaker 1: that kind of realization of you know, I'm talented, yes,
Speaker 1: but I need to work harder and plow that into
Speaker 1: something else. What did that give you? Having that humility,
Speaker 1: which I think is really and then pushing you. Has
Speaker 1: that has that kind of followed you through your career
Speaker 1: in terms of the constant need to be improving and
Speaker 1: working on your talent percent.
Speaker 2: I think it's a very constant. It's a very normal
Speaker 2: thing to stagnate, and I have stagnated quite a few times.
Speaker 2: And you also sometimes get stuck in that, especially in
Speaker 2: the kind of thing that I do. I play a
Speaker 2: lot of the restaurant scenes and stuff. You stagnate a
Speaker 2: lot and you have to re evaluate every every now
Speaker 2: and because you start getting bored with and you're not
Speaker 2: happy with the gigs, and you know, because it becomes work, right,
Speaker 2: that's the reality of it. Yeah, I mean back to COVID,
Speaker 2: I was doing twenty to twenty four shows a month
Speaker 2: to make a living, and it's a lot of gigging.
Speaker 2: So it's start being on stage and like, I really
Speaker 2: don't want to do this, and it shouldn't be because
Speaker 2: you've got to go back and reflect to on why
Speaker 2: you're there and everything else. So that in those moments
Speaker 2: is when you readjust and go Okay, I'll learn new
Speaker 2: songs to give me inspiration again to be more by
Speaker 2: being stage, or I'll go practice something new, or I'll
Speaker 2: start a new band, or I'll write a new song.
Speaker 2: You need to kind of and always innovate yourself and
Speaker 2: keep yourself excited about about it, Otherwise it just dies out.
Speaker 2: And and it is a constant thing that happens. I
Speaker 2: think every year I go through it and I need
Speaker 2: to do something new to trying. And the getting better
Speaker 2: thing is I know. I mean, I'm forty five years
Speaker 2: old and if I was really that great, I would
Speaker 2: have achieved something by now. So I have no problem
Speaker 2: saying that I am not as great as a Britney Spears.
Speaker 2: And I proudly say it. It's not an issue to
Speaker 2: to not be that great, you.
Speaker 1: Know, I'm such as that is such an interstorry to intro.
Speaker 1: That is such an interesting thing that you say there, Pedro,
Speaker 1: and I vehemently disagree with with the greatest of respect
Speaker 1: that there are. There's just not enough parallels to draw
Speaker 1: between you in a Britney Spears. It's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: like comparing apples and oranges. And I also am a
Speaker 1: firm believer in you know, I'm a firm believer in
Speaker 1: that in that luck has an awful lot to do
Speaker 1: with success as well. I firmly believe that the best song,
Speaker 1: the best book, the best movie to ever be written,
Speaker 1: has yet to be made, and it's probably buried in
Speaker 1: a little village somewhere, or I truly believe that it's I.
Speaker 1: I don't think that, I because because also I look
Speaker 1: at some of the nonsense that's out there, and maybe
Speaker 1: not to call somebody else's creative endeavor nonsense, but I
Speaker 1: think I kind of think, well, that's you know, that
Speaker 1: didn't blow my socks off. And yet I can go
Speaker 1: and hear somebody playing, you know, sitting and doing an
Speaker 1: acoustic set busking at the VNA waterfront, and they bring
Speaker 1: me to tears, and I think, how is that possible
Speaker 1: that that person hasn't reached a million people? And it's
Speaker 1: because opportunity hasn't yet met them. So I don't know
Speaker 1: if I agree with that. I want to talk very
Speaker 1: briefly because I want to listen to the song about
Speaker 1: the Star in You, which is your latest EP. Is
Speaker 1: that a collection of things that you've written over the years.
Speaker 1: Did you write specifically for the EP?
Speaker 2: So? I actually it was a combination of like eighties
Speaker 2: kind of inspired kind of tunes. That was what the
Speaker 2: idea was for for for the story in New There's
Speaker 2: one song that got nothing to do with the actor.
Speaker 2: But that was a trading post. That was actually something
Speaker 2: else because I I invested into a restaurant. I'm sorry
Speaker 2: short and I wrote a song about it. But the
Speaker 2: rest was was was yeah, it was just the eighties
Speaker 2: kind of thing it was. It wasn't specifically written for
Speaker 2: the EP. I just put them together for that because
Speaker 2: I've got this concept of releasing a couple of EPs
Speaker 2: on different styles of music that like, so I'm busy
Speaker 2: now with the African one, and then there's like an
Speaker 2: indie folk one that's going to come out soon as well.
Speaker 2: So I've got these four or five tracks that are
Speaker 2: coming out in different EPs, and that was the first one.
Speaker 1: We are going to play one of the tracks from
Speaker 1: that EP. It's called We Are Late. It's lovely to
Speaker 1: chat to you again, Pedro, thanks very much indeed for
Speaker 1: your time. I'm really looking forward to our audience hearing this.
Speaker 1: It is Pedro Barbosa, available to stream on all of
Speaker 1: your digital platforms. We Are Light