“Biko” by Peter Gabriel

"Biko" comes from Peter Gabriel's third self-titled album of 1980, and it's a eulogy with a clenched fist. Gabriel wrote it after hearing on the news that Steve Biko, the black South African anti-apartheid activist, had died in police custody on 12 September 1977, and he sings of that death and the brutality of the apartheid state, slipping phrases in Xhosa into the lyric.

The sound is stark and tribal, fed by Gabriel's growing fascination with African music: Phil Collins beating a slow, two-tone pulse on a Brazilian surdo, David Rhodes's guitar grinding with distortion, Larry Fast's synthesizer keening like bagpipes. Steve Lillywhite produced, and recordings of songs sung at Biko's funeral frame the track at both ends. It reached No. 38 in Britain, South Africa banned it, and it pulled Gabriel into human rights work while helping carry resistance to apartheid into Western pop, inspiring projects like Sun City.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.