EARLY YEARS
I was born in March 1967, in Kuwait to a Palestinian Arab father and English/Welsh mother. My father worked for the state oil company and I spent most of my early years in Kuwait until I was sent to school in England.
It was their that I first became aware of different types of music and quickly realised that I liked the off-beat style of reggae and in particular the ska sound of the English midlands which was popular at that time.
MUSIC BEGINNINGS
I then went to college in Coventry. Bands like Selector, The Specials and labels like 2-tone provided the soundtrack and I soon realised that I wanted to start making music. My cousin, who was also studying at the University was a musician and he gave me advice on buying my first bass guitar.And so my musical career (or lack of it) began!
CHURCH OF BONGO
There is nothing really like the bass to quickly learn how to make music or to play with others and soon I was playing with a motley crew of musicians loosely attached to the pseudo-cult Church of Bongo. This midlands phenomenon met regularly each full moon in some woods near Leamington Spa to play the drums, and usually, at least on my part, to injest the fine local magic mushrooms. Unfortunately the local police seemed to think we were witches.
ABINGI BONGI
As a group we were called Abingi-Bongi and although we only played a couple of times, each was a memorable occasion as we encouraged our audience to bring drums and join in. The anarchic response of our followers, a subsequent ban from one venue and a general lack of togetherness put paid to glory but it was the first step on my musical journey.
CHICKEN SHACK
At this point I set up a label called Chicken Shack with two good friends from Leamington, Andy Guthrie, (who was already a well known techno producer) and Orville Hall (club promoter and drummer). Our only release, by Midlands maverick Tim Ellis was the well received "General Theory of Dub", but we never really had the financial muscle needed to put anything our but the audio-tape version. I still hear it sometimes, once in a tea tent at Glastonbury festival and I still feel good that I had some part in making the album happen.
Following the death of my father, I had a rethink and it became clear that playing the record company exec was not really for me, and so, inspired by the limited equipment Tim Ellis had used to make General Theory I bought myself a Roland W30, sampler and started producing my own music.
By a stroke of good fortune the company who sold me the gear, sent me two keyboards by mistake and I ended up making music with the man I sold the second one to, Adam Ward-Knott aka Chief Abongi-Man.
SOUND UPRISING
Sound Uprising which we became known as, and our music, a combination of dub and electro was always going to be out of place in the new scene dominated by house music and dance culture and after a few nightmare gigs we realised that we enjoyed playing around in the studio more than pretending to be pop stars. Which was probably for the best....
As Sound Uprising we produced hours of material that no-one ever heard) but it was my apprenticeship in the house of dub. Abongiman as he was now known decided to call it a day and left Sound Uprising to join a tango band leaving bingiman to pursue collaborations with the musicians who later would make up the Three Halves Sound System.
THREE HALVES
The Three Halves was a different experience for me because it really was a live outfit more than a recording band. We played dance music with Sam Johnson on guitar, I would trigger samples from the computer and MC while the two DJ's Big Smoke & Popeye would lay down the grooves. We did some great gigs but now, the bones started complaining at the hard work, physical as well as mental running with an outfit like this could be and this time it was I who called time.
Originally I wasn't going get into any musical project after that. I had a laugh but to be honest it was all a bit disheartening realising that the pilled up, gurnning faces in front of me probably wouldn't remember their own name in the morning, let alone ours.
BINGIMAN
I am sure, some people really do break through playing live gigs, but to me it was only very rarely worth it. So whatever was to come next had to involve writing music myself and so Prince Bingi was transformed into bingiman and I started to write my own material. Dub's but also other styles of music, with no self-restriction. I released the music on the internet and slowly people started to hear it. A few emails at first but people seemed to like it.
BOOMCLICK
At the sametime I got back involved with Sam and Paul who together with Rui formed boomclick after the end the Three Halves and just as I thought the life of a musician was behind me I was singing at big gigs like bestival, glastonbury and the big chill. The boomclick album "Halfway between today and tomorrow" was released on Rob da Bank'slabel, Sunday Best and is still selling around the world. I sing on two songs, "Homegrown" and "It must have been crazy".
I really enjoyed playing with boomclick especially the big gigs, but it reached a point where I wasn't really getting musical fulfillment from the project. Timing meant that combined with a call to go travelling. And so my family left to go to eastern and southern europe for an adventure in our motorhome.
After the release of the album boomclick split up and currently Sam and Paul are rehearsing their new project at their Old Street studios with a new singer and a new drummer, Manu and Laurence. Rui has carried on the name boomclick sound system with Rosa on vocals.
THE FUTURE
As for me
I'm still making music, some of which I will be releasing here and elsewhere. My home page http://www.bingi.info is probably the best place to keep in contact with the latest stuff.
But in the end I have made a lot of friends through music and if that's what this is all about. I'm up for it.