Live Concert Photography: Peter One at Rockwood Music Hall 2/15/23

Live Concert Photography: Peter One at Rockwood Music Hall 2/15/23

Peter One (born Pierre-Evrard Tra) is a Bonoua, Côte d’Ivoire-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter and musician. He grew up listening to the small southeastern Ivorian town’s only radio station — the radio station that lead him to falling in love with American folk music, specifically Simon & Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and others. Hearing Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” for the first time was transformative for the Ivorian-born artist: “That song, it sounded to me like something that I’d heard already, something that I love already, you know? The melodies, the harmonies in the vocals, in the guitar, and the simplicity of the music. Not too many instruments, not too many electronics: it was music the way I want music to be.”

Tra first learned guitar when he was 17 and he quickly developed stylistic affinities for African troubadours like Benin’s G.G Vikey and Cameroon’s Eboa Lotin and he began blending that with the chordal and harmonic lushness of his American favorites.

Attending the University of Abidjan changed his life: Tra’s dorm mate introduced him to another folk music lover known as Jess Sah Bi, who had connections at the national TV station. A few broadcast TV performances led to the recording of their full-length debut, 1985’s The Garden Needs Its Flowers. To differentiate themselves from what was typically seen in Côte d’Ivoire, the duo consciously imagined their album in the Southwestern American style. Featuring some song titles in English, the cover design — its colors and Wild West-influenced fonts — were much more reminiscent of American folk albums released in the 1970s and early 80s. The album’s material infused expansive, scenic sensibilities at points with Ivorian village songs and 1980s Afro-pop flourishes with lyrics sung in French, English and Gouro, which helped broaden their appeal at home and across West Africa. In fact, the album saw them play in the Ivorian cities of Abidjan and Bouaké, as well as in Togo, Benin, Liberia and Burkina Faso. They played for presidents and first ladies — and their song “African Chant” was used by the BBC to soundtrack Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990.

In the mid ’90s, Tra, weary of both the spotlight and the uncertain and tumultuous political situation at home emigrated to the States to seek below-the-line expertise as a producer. “I knew that it was not going to be easy in the U.S. I knew that nobody knew me here,” Tra recalls. “So I was not big headed. I knew that I had to work hard to find my way.” And like many immigrants, he had no plans to stay in the States permanently: “I came first to learn how the music business works, to buy my own equipment, and go back home and start my own business as a music producer. But when I got here, I realized that it wasn’t going to be that easy—I wasn’t shocked, but I was determined. I was determined.” The political and social situation at home got worse, and at that point the Ivorian-born singer/songwriter knew he had to pivot and as she says “make a Plan B.”

After landing in New York, Tra wound up in Delaware and eventually to Nashville, where he has settled with his family. He took up a series of jobs in nursing to provide for his family. Nursing managed to bring him both further away and closer to his goal of being a producer and musician — it was a nursing job that brought him to Nashville. “I never thought about living in Nashville—never—until I got a job here!” Tra says. “But when I landed here, I went to Broadway and I could just feel it, and I said, ‘this is a place for music.’ I saw music everywhere—everybody plays music, everybody’s a musician—and I said, ‘Wow, this is the world for me.” And yet for someone, who had been a mainstay of both radio and club playlists back in Côte d’Ivoire, the Ivorian-born singer/songwriter toiled in relatively obscurity in Nashville for years — until 2018.

As the story goes, Brian Shimkovitz, an enterprising former Fulbright scholar, who had spent time in West Africa in the early 2000s had stated a label, Awesome Tapes from Africa and wanted to re-release Our Garden Needs Its Flowers. Shimkovtiz reached out to be Bi and Tra, and the trio agreed to re-release the album — this time to glowing reviews in Pitchfork and Rolling Stone.

Tra’s dream of making a living as a musician, which had threatened to elude him — perhaps permanently — was once again within reach. Now, in his late 60s, the Ivorian-born, Nashville-based artist has staged his second act — as a solo artist. When I caught him at Rockwood Music Hall earlier this year,. he played material off his then-unreleased full-length debut, Come Back to Me, an album that sees him crafting a unique and gorgeous blend of country, folk and Afro pop.

Check out photos below.