One would expect the music playlist of a protest leader to comprise of fiery and amped tracks like Public Enemy’s ‘Fight The Power’ or Gill Scott Heron’s ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’, but Peter Kerre’s sound choice is a surprising irony of fire meeting water.
To many, he is known as Dj Xpect, a DJ/Producer who was has been at the pioneering forefront of introducing afro sounds to the American market for over a decade, from being an urban radio mix show Dj , to being the first deejay to ever promote and Dj a weekly afropop night in lower Manhattan , and eventually being enlisted by Multi Grammy Award winning musician Alicia Keys for production on a musical project. In the last couple of years, he has been more known for being a leader of one of the biggest revolutionary protest movements to emerge in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, StreetRiders NYC, a cycling protest which was the largest weekly global bike protest all through 2020. He followed this up by founding an internationally recognized public safety initiative called Safewalks, formed in light of attacks on women around subway stations in Brooklyn, and which is still in existence serving all boroughs of New York City. He received a community spirit award from the New York Knicks for the efforts around Safewalks.
Being at the forefront of social justice and community initiatives meant that his music had to take a backseat, and while during the pandemic, musicians had a readily available market of listeners to digest their music, he was on the streets fighting for black lives. His plans to introduce the world to his unique soulful afro-electronic music created over the years had to take a backseat from being introduced to the masses, but it served a greater purpose. According to Xpect, the music was his therapist, and kept him balanced while having to put his life on the line daily protesting for black lives on the New York Streets, facing off with not only overly aggressive counter-protestor aggression from NYPD, but daily life-threats from anonymous entities and racist groups. He thus felt that it was befitting for him to name the EP album Nomadic Soul Therapy, which also describes the afroelectronica sound he coined ; Nomadic Soul .
“Sound is a therapeutic medium”, he says. “ I have always created music for personal therapeutical purposes and it has been a very vulnerable outlet of emotion, an escape to a fantasy calm space” he adds. “ I planned to introduce the world to afroelectronica and nomadic soul in 2020, but then the pandemic came along, and so did the protests. 2020 would have been an ideal time to put the music out as the world was in great need of calming music for the soul, but I redirected all my resources and financial savings meant for the album into creating the protest movement and giving to community efforts. The pandemic might ( or might not ) be coming to an end , and protests might not be as prominent, but the world is still in great need of healing . Black lives are still yet to matter, the world is at war, people are struggling to survive. “ .
With his upcoming EP ‘Nomadic Soul Therapy’, Xpect hopes that the sound will not only serve as a calming and healing escape to a far away place, but also a unifier in love and purpose.
Nomadic Soul Therapy will be available on all platforms on Sunday July 3rd 2022. The first single , ‘ Free my Soul’ will be available on all digital platforms on Friday June 24th’ and can be streamed below. For more info, email : contact(at)futuresoundsociete.com
By Sharaya Smith, Journalist
GALLERY
