How the Bosnian war inspired Yusuf / Cat Stevens to return to music
Known best by his original stage name, Cat Stevens, Steven Demetre Georgiou has led an entirely unique music career over the last half-century. After proving himself a crucial string to the bow of the early 1970s singer-songwriter boom, Stevens found faith in Islam. Changing his name to Yusuf Islam, he dropped the guitar in favour of the Qur’an, much to the frustration of his devoted fans.
The first incarnation of Stevens’ career reached a climax in the early 1970s with his triple platinum-certified fourth and fifth albums, Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat. The two records boasted some of Stevens’ most memorable and essential hits, including ‘Father and Son’, ‘Wild World’, ‘Moonshadow’, ‘Peace Train’, and ‘Morning Has Broken’.
While Stevens was born to a Greek Orthodox father and a Baptist mother, the rock ‘n’ roll revolution of British music in the 1960s drew much of his attention from religious devotion. His first brush with Islam came in the mid-70s while on holiday in Marrakech, where he first experienced the adhān, the Islamic ritual call to prayer. The ritualistic incantations were explained to him as “music for God”.
“I thought, music for God? I’d never heard that before,” Stevens told The Evening Standard in 2002. “I’d heard of music for money, music for fame, music for personal power, but music for God!”
In 1976, Stevens was swept out to sea by a riptide off the coast of Malibu, California. In his frenetic fear of drowning, he recalled screaming, “Oh, God! If you save me, I will work for you.” Almost instantaneously, a large wave helped to push Stevens towards safety as if by the hand of God.
Stevens had always maintained a spiritual side, but following this experience, he heard a more distinctive call to prayer. As noted in Amy Reiter’s 1999 book Salon People: Cat Stevens, Stevens had previously explored “Buddhism, Zen, I Ching, numerology, tarot cards, and astrology.” Stevens’ brother, David Gordon, who was a Jewish convert, later brought him a copy of the Qur’an as a birthday gift from a trip to Jerusalem.
“I would never have picked up the Qur’an myself as a free spirit; I was more aligned to my father’s Greek Orthodox beliefs,” Stevens remembered during his appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. However, after reading the sacred texts, he became immersed in the doctrine. After selling his guitars to charity, he devoted himself full-time to the Islamic faith.
“I was very selective over what records I bought in terms of what I allowed to enter my audio domain,” Stevens recalled of his 1977 conversion in a 2017 interview with Yousif Nur. “So I would be listening generally on the airwaves or other people’s collections. When it came to embracing Islam, Elvis had just died, which probably symbolically meant it was the death of rock ‘n’ roll! I was more interested in studying my faith and the records I was interested in at that time were Quran cassettes and that took all my listening time up. I used to play my own music from the very beginning. I hardly sang anybody else’s songs. I’d be focused on my music and I more or less stopped writing. I didn’t have the inspiration anymore. Things changed.”
Later, Stevens was asked why his conversion to Islam necessitated a retreat from music. “That’s a big question,” he pondered in response. “But essentially, the first song I wrote when my daughter was born was called ‘A For Allah’. I wanted my child to grow up learning that ‘A’ is not only for apples.”
Continuing, Stevens revealed how the atrocities of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia illlicited his eventual return to music. “The big change happened when the Bosnian war happened,” he explained. “When I visited Bosnia, I found that there was an overwhelming connection between the struggle there and music. There was still singing, even though they were being bombed out of existence. It gave them spirit, and I realised that that was a turning point in my life.”
“I was listening to very conservative voices in Islam about being careful with music, frivolity and time-wasting,” he continued. “But this was not time wasting, this was survival! It opened up a whole new understanding for me about the role of music in Islamic civilisation. Then I discovered later that the guitar was probably introduced to Europe via the lute, which came from the Arabic Oud. The Oud came from Baghdad to Andalucía and from there it entered Europe. In fact, the word troubadour means ‘to entertain’ in Arabic. So when you see all these pictures of medieval England with lute players, they were actually getting these from Islamic civilisation”.
Adding: “But with regards to the decision to pick up the guitar again, my son one day brought one home and that was the beginning of my coming together with music again. Music for me evokes so many emotions but I would hear how artists stretch the boundaries, particularly in the seventies. Today, there’s so much repetition, cut and paste and sample sounds that it just makes you appreciate the days of analogue and how inspired many of those groups and artists were, including me, of course.”
In 2006, Stevens returned to pop music with the release of his first new studio album in 28 years, An Other Cup. At this point, he dropped “Islam” from his name and has continued to release a further four studio albums under the stage name Yusuf / Cat Stevens. Stevens remains musically active today and is scheduled to perform in Glastonbury’s Legend’s slot on the Pyramid Stage this summer.
Watch Yusuf / Cat Stevens discuss his spiritual and musical journey with Russell Brand below.
