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SK: Relatively speaking, yes. I mean, compared to some of the guys who end up being professional

musicians, it was very late. I know people who started when they were three and four years old.

BiTS: Yes, that’s very true. How did you get into it, anyway? How did you get into music in the first
place?

SK: There was no kind of plan to get into music. My brother used to be a musician. He’s older than I
am. He was a percussionist initially and then he learned to play the flute. Joined a few bands

around London in the 60s, and he wanted to spread his wings a bit with the percussion side, so he
moved from congas and bongos to a drum kit, but he never got on with the drum kit, so he left the
drums in our basement. I used to come in and just hit the drums. Not try and play them. I wasn’t
trying to learn to play drums. It was just hitting. Therapy, basically. That’s how I got into it, just
hitting drums.

BiTS: What music were you playing to, or was it just in your head?

SK: That’s what I’m saying to you - I wasn’t playing anything, I was just hitting. I wasn’t trying to

play a pattern. I was just hitting drums. Rather than going out and getting beaten up or beating up
people at the time because I was a very angry young man at that time. I think most of us are when
you’re somewhere between 16 and 18, so that’s how I used to dissipate all that anger, is just going
to the basement, hitting drums and coming out and feeling quite mellow after that. There was no
intention of playing the instrument as such - that evolved.

BiTS: How did that happen then? How did it evolve?

SK: Where we used to live was a place called the White Horse. Do you know south London at all?

BiTS: A little bit. Yes.

Cymande live in Lausanne

SK: Brixton Road, I think it’s the A23, runs from the Oval, up by where the Oval cricket ground is
right through into the middle of Brixton itself. About halfway along, there’s a place called the White

Horse. That’s where we used to live and at the Oval, I think it’s still there, is an arts centre called