‘I knead the audience, like a baker!’ House music legend Peven Everett on life after cancer and vanquishing the ‘Disco Sucks’ movement

A new documentary follows the Chicagoan from child trumpet prodigy to Gabriel-singing icon and DIY maverick. ‘Not everybody wants to see musical genius’, he says At We Out Here festival in Dorset in August, thousands of people could be heard singing a trumpet melody as if it was

A new documentary follows the Chicagoan from child trumpet prodigy to Gabriel-singing icon and DIY maverick. ‘Not everybody wants to see musical genius’, he says At We Out Here festival in Dorset in August, thousands of people could be heard singing a trumpet melody as if it was a giant brass-band karaoke session. On stage was Peven Everett, performing a rendition of Gabriel , one of the most celebrated anthems in dance-music history.

Co-created with producer Roy Davis Jr, the best-known version, which blew up in UK clubs in the mid-90s, is a spiritual garage-house track about the “archangel of love” that can bring both punters and DJs to tears. But Everett is much more than one song. Damon Albarn of Gorillaz tells me that “Peven has a once-in-a-generation voice … he’s a great inspiration to us all.” We Out Here founder, Gilles Peterson says that the Chicagoan is, alongside Detroit’s Moodymann and Amp Fiddler, “the closest thing dance music has to a Prince-type figure”.

A prolific multi-instrumentalist and one-man cottage industry, Everett’s catalogue spans more than 500 tracks, across house, neo-soul, hip-hop, samba and more. Continue reading...