DEFIANT SPOKEN WORD POET

In the middle of the darket days of Thatcherism Haji Mike started out at a DJ at Essex Univ spinning reggae and soul in the late 1970's with Daddy D, Nasty G, Skev and Jah Andy and weekly radio shows on URE - his first taste of a radio station. While at University he also got his first taste of poetry, although initially he found the campus poetry society too pretentious. Inspired by LKJ, Gil Scott-Heron, Benjamin Zephaniah, Pablo Neruda, Nikos Kazantsakis and Nazim Hikmet, he began to explore poetry more as performance.

Simultaneously he got more into music after moving back to London witnessing the ‘summer of love’ and the wharehouse scene as well as his much deeper passion for sound system culture....Like most people he also dabbled in bands but went solo because of ego clashes and pettiness he experienced in bands...In 1990 first single, ‘As’Ta’ totally self financed, 500 white labels and the bank manager was shocked when he paid back the overdraft in 2 months!

From there he made more singles, began working with the late Zacharias 'Sugar' Hajishacalli, the bouzouki and bithkiavli master player. Sugar's production touch gave Haji Mike several hits in London and Cyprus in 1992-3 and eventually he returned home to Cyprus, after 33 years in Blighty. He also worked with Simon Booth, just as he was forming The Afro Celt Sound System, and played various venues through the UK and Ireland.