This is an intriguing album. On the face of it it’s a collection of expertly played songs which hark back to singer/songwriter folksiness of the seventies in their manner and delivery. Indeed, there are occasions when the ghost of Jake Thackray seems to be hidden within the grooves although much of the album tackles fairly heavyweight themes including identity, race, immigration and empire.

Glen Peters is an Anglo Indian who was born in Calcutta. His family moved to England in 1967 just as Enoch Powell was igniting racial hatred with his infamous rivers of blood speech. The 17 year old Peters was fortunate enough to make friends with a pal who told him “Don’t worry, we’re not all like Enoch” and introduced him to the then cosy world of folk clubs, a world Peters has inhabited since then, initially as a performer and then running various clubs himself while also establishing a successful career as an advocate for and pioneer in eco friendly green energy.

A latecomer to recording (Where Do You Come From? Is only his second album) Peters proves himself a more than able writer while his voice is calm and laid back, none more so than on the rolling Caribbean lilt which suffuses the opening song My Face Don’t Fit.  Sounding somewhat like Jeb Loy Nichols, Peters here pays tribute to a man called Paul Stephenson, a Trinidadian born native of Bristol who organised a Rosa Parks like boycott of Bristol’s buses back in the early 60s as the bus company refused to employ black or Asian staff. He won that war and his boycott helped pave the way to the 1965 Race Relations Act, the UK’s first attempt to address racial discrimination.

It’s an arresting opener, made all the better for the quality of the musicians Peters has employed. The album was recorded in Glasgow with Boo Hewerdine producing and the cast of players is a roll call of top notch Scottish musicians including Kris Drever, Euan Burton and Yvonne Lyon while Sweden’s Gustaf Ljunggren plays several instruments throughout. Hewerdine himself plays guitar and piano throughout and even disinters Ivor Cutler’s harmonium on a couple of occasions.

It’s Cutler’s wheezy harmonium which introduces Patel’s Corner Shop, a celebration of the ubiquitous local corner shop, many of them set up by Asians fleeing Idi Amin’s Uganda in the early 70s. From then the album seesaws between songs with a historical bent and several which are more personal. Of the former, Khan Of the Wire is based on the true story of Noor Inayat Khan, a Muslim woman who joined the Special Operations Executive and was killed by the Nazis in occupied Europe. Based around Peters’ visit to her memorial statue in Bloomsbury Square it’s affectionate and moving and a reminder that it wasn’t only white males who fought the fascists. Sepoy’s Lament meanwhile imagines the conflict experienced by an Indian soldier commanded to participate in the murderous Amritsar massacre. It’s the most “folk like” song here, sung to a martial beat and quite rousing.

On the personal front Peters introduces a note of jollity on the music hall like Oh To Be An Aries, a nod to the astrological influences to be found in India (much more profound than here) but he is more serious on his reflection of what home means on Home Is, a plaintive piano led ballad with a gorgeous string arrangement. When You’re 16 is perhaps the most autobiographical song on the album as Peters, singing along to a 50s like rock’n’roll pop backing, recalls the uncertainty and excitement which coexisted within him when he migrated to London. That melting pot of east and west, the collision of cultures and the eventual realisation that, to use a Scots term, “We’re all Jock Tampson’s bairns” is summed up in the closing song Where Do You Come From? Jettisoning his backing players, Peters begins the song by singing “57 flavours in my family tree,” perhaps making the point that we are all just human “beans.” Anyhow, here he takes to task the essential absurdity of the question posed. After all, who of us really knows where we truly come from?

Packaged in a sumptuous manner with notes to all the songs in a 64 page booklet, Where Do You Come From?  is not only very entertaining but thoughtful and provocative and well worth a listen.

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