Singer, songwriter and guitarist Ben Harper has experimented with many genres during his career including folk, blues, hard rock, country, jazz and reggae. He is certainly one who’s hard to categorise and as such has had opportunity to play with a whole host of varied artists along the way.
Raised in a musical family in California, Harper picked up the guitar at an early age and began performing publicly when he was just 12 years old. Shortly after appearing alongside Taj Mahal at a concert in 1992, Harper signed with Virgin Records. His first album, ‘Welcome to the Cruel World’, introduced him as a folk-influenced rocker with a soft musical approach and politically driven lyrics.
‘Fight for Your Mind’ (1995) features Harper’s precocious capabilities on the Weissenborn (a hollow-necked lap-steel guitar), while ‘The Will to Live’ (1997) and ‘Burn to Shine’ (1999), by he and his band the Innocent Criminals, definitely demonstrate a move to the more electric side of rock. The heavily world music influenced ‘Diamonds on the Inside’ was released in 2003 and the following year, he collaborated with the Blind Boys of Alabama on an album of gospel songs.
In 2007 Harper released the album ‘Lifeline’, which he recorded in Paris in just one week on a 16-track analog tape machine with no computerised assistance.
