WORDS: ADAM DUXBURY
Back in 2005 Bloc Party released Silent Alarm, a multi-award winning, certified platinum debut album. Critics loved them, their listeners loved them, but it would have been easy to write them off as just another British indie band in a sea of Razorlights, Kasabians and Arctic Monkeys. Except that the band’s frontman was the then 23-year-old Kele Okereke. And he was black.
In a musical genre dominated by white men, Kele was a refreshingly different kind of indie icon. But then he came out as gay and went from unusual to unique. A black, gay role model in indie music; it was a label that, at the time, he didn’t love. And you don’t need to look far to find several “difficult” interviews in which he tried to explain that he was more than just a label. Since then he’s gone through several metamorphoses; striking out on his own as a buffed-up pugilist on his first solo album, becoming a DJ and channeling his love of Berlin house music, before disbanding Bloc Party then reforming the band with a new line-up.