From the New Jerusalem to the secret World: Peter Gabriel and the shifting self

Abstract

Identities are never unified and, in late modern times, increasingly fragmented and fractured; never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices and positions. Peter Gabriel's musical identity emerged at the height of British progressive rock while a member of the group Genesis. Prog rock was a grandiose movement toward musical maturity, but Genesis' early recordings betrayed the group's youth. Like many of his peers, as lyricist and lead singer of Genesis Peter Gabriel utilized the distancing nature of progressive rock to explore issues of personal and cultural identity, what it meant to be English, and what being English sounded like. The 'new Jerusalem', the hope which closed 'Supper's Ready', could very well have been the 'Secret World'. Gabriel's English character had needed to hide behind Genesis' prog rock bombast; a gradual shedding of progressive rock signalled a shedding of Englishness; and an embracing of 'world' music allowed for an embracing of his new self.