Bryn Christopher
| Bryn Christopher | |
|---|---|
| Born |
8 November 1985 Birmingham, England |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) |
|
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | 1997–present |
| Labels | |
Bryn Christopher (born 8 November 1985,Birmingham, England), also known as Skaar, is a British singer and songwriter, currently a member of drum and bass group I See Monstas.
Bryn was brought up in Great Barr, Birmingham, one of four children born to a black father and a white mother. He went to Barr Beacon School, Great Barr. His parents separated before Bryn's seventh birthday, and he was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother. Painfully skinny, with different interests from the other kids, Bryn was teased mercilessly and began to dread going to school, until he joined a youth theatre company at the age of 12. Here he discovered a sense of confidence and the kind of pop music – Alicia Keys, Michael Jackson – that he could relate to.
He joined a soul band at his secondary school and wrote his first songs as part of his music GCSE. But perhaps the pivotal moment in his aural education came when Bryn and some school friends attended a play and heard Try A Little Tenderness sung on the backing track by someone who clearly wasn't The Commitments... "I was shouting out to my friends during the play," he recalls. "I was like, This guy is amazing! Who is it?' I'd never heard anyone sing like that. And someone told me it was Otis Redding."
A crash-course in Redding's music turned Bryn's musical life upside down: suddenly, he knew that he wanted to make music with this combination of passionate intensity and melodic accessibility. He then discovered Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. "It was incredible suddenly being exposed to these unbelievable people that had been around all this time whose existence I had no idea of. It totally changed my outlook."
Doing something about it was another matter. He was living in a small town with no musical mentor and with peers who were happier hanging out on the streets playing football. "I could definitely have ended up in a very different place if I'd given in to the bullies. You either beat them or join them". So with a massive desire to be a successful singer, a determined teenage Bryn went against the grain.
With no real idea how to break into the music industry Bryn was tempted, like most young singers are these days, towards auditioning for talent shows. He's thankful now that it proved a non-starter. "It was a learning curve – I didn't know any other way, I had no-one to tell me what was right and wrong and I couldn't think of any other way to move forward as a wannabe singer in the town I was living". He now marvels at his narrow escape. "Those things have had some really talented people that have come through them but I often catch the shows and think 'thank God I didn't end up there. It's just not me'"
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