Peter Gabriel is a singer-songwriter, musician and humanitarian activist who rose to fame as the original lead singer and flautist of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving Genesis in 1975, Gabriel launched a solo career, with Solsbury Hill, his first single. The album’s most successful single, Sledgehammer, won a... Read more
Peter Gabriel is a singer-songwriter, musician and humanitarian activist who rose to fame as the original lead singer and flautist of the progressive rock band Genesis.
After leaving Genesis in 1975, Gabriel launched a solo career, with Solsbury Hill, his first single. The album’s most successful single, Sledgehammer, won a record nine MTV Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards and remains the most played music video in the history of MTV.
Peter Gabriel has been a champion of world music for much of his career. He co-founded the WOMAD festival in 1982. He has continued to focus on producing and promoting world music through his Real World Records label. He has also pioneered digital distribution methods for music, co-founding OD2, one of the first online music download services.
Gabriel has also been involved in numerous humanitarian efforts. In 1980, he released the anti-apartheid single Biko. He has participated in several human rights benefit concerts, including Amnesty International’s Human Rights Now! tour in 1988, and co-founded the Witness human rights organisation in 1992. Gabriel developed The Elders with Richard Branson, which was launched by Nelson Mandela in 2007.
Amongst his many other humanitarian projects, Peter Gabriel is focused on campaigning for the protection of privacy. Having experienced the media’s invasion of his own privacy, he is keen to promote the protection of personal privacy, moving away from a media culture that disregards morality.
Recently, Gabriel has also written a song for the film Snowden, the biographical political thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden.