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