VIDEO Peter Gabriel outlines his path to world music on CNN WorldBeat Windows Media 28K 80K

October 8, 1999
Web posted at: 5:44 p.m. EDT (2144 GMT)

A CNN WorldBeat Report

(CNN) -- When Peter Gabriel first led Genesis onto the music charts in the early 1970s, his band was one of the first to sign with the then-fledgling Charisma label. Twenty years later, he started his own record label as a way to promote lesser-known artists from around the world.

Today, with a sizable body of his own music behind him and international recognition of his status as a human rights advocate, Gabriel still helms the the label he founded.

Real World Records boasts a roster of such diverse groups as Afro-Celt Sound System, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Tibet's Yungchen Lhamo. The label's 10th anniversary recently was celebrated with a party at New World Studios. Many of the company's top recording artists attended.

To hear Gabriel tell it, the road to a label was paved with frustration. "In 1980, a group of us who were really excited about world music wanted to find more of it," he says. "And there were maybe two or three record shops in London (where) you could find it, and it was very hard to see it anywhere.

"So I called a few friends together to try to put together a festival, which might promote and really introduce people to a lot of stuff, and that was called WOMAD, the World of Music, Arts and Dance."

WOMAD, which has since grown and spread to five continents, proved a springboard for the label.

"We started Real World Records on a very tight budget," Gabriel says. "Things took a while to get going, but today it's very healthy."