Rhythm Of The Heat by Peter Gabriel

Album: Security (1982)

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Gabriel wrote this song about psychologist Carl Jung's visit to Africa. He joined a group of drummers and dancers and became overwhelmed with fear. Gabriel learned about it from Jung's book Symbols And The Interpretation Of Dreams.

Jung was studying the Collective Unconscious, and was afraid he would go mad as the drummers and dancers let the music control them. Gabriel tries to capture this feeling with the tribal drumbeats.
Gabriel incorporated a lot of world music into his solo work, and this song is a great example. He explained to the NME in 1982: "The end of 'Rhythm Of The Heat' uses the Ghanaian war dance as an echo – because a big bass thud underneath it puts it in a different dimension. An area that I can identify with more strongly than something that sounds purely 'African.'"
The original titled was "Jung In Africa."
Gabriel created the basic rhythm on this track by recording a modified slide whistle and processing it through a Fairlight synthesizer. Gabriel and his engineer, David Lord, gathered a number of organic sounds for the Security album, which they augmented with the latest drum machines and synthesizers.
This is the first track on Security, Peter Gabriel's fourth solo album. Before releasing the album in September 1982, he performed some of the songs, including "Rhythm Of The Heat," at his WOMAD festival that July in Somerset, England. WOMAD (World Of Music, Arts And Dance) was a very ambitious venture, bringing together performers from all over the world, including drummers from Africa and dancers from China. It wasn't well attended and lost so much money that Gabriel played a reunion concert with Genesis to bail it out, but he had faith in the concept and did it again the following year with better logistics. WOMAD had since branched out to many countries, introducing audiences to a wide spectrum of talent.
Along with "Biko," this is one of two Peter Gabriel songs used in the season 1 Miami Vice episode "Evan" in 1985. "Rhythm Of The Heat" also appeared in the 1994 movie Natural Born Killers.

Comments: 1

Eric from Lake Forest, CaIn live shows, this was the first song. Gabriel and the band would enter from the rear of the hall playing drums.

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