Biko (feat. Alex Brown, Peter Gabriel, Ladysmith Black Mambazo & Geoffrey Oryema)

This song is about the South African anti-apartheid veteran Steve Biko, who in 1977 was killed by police officers while in custody for related political reasons. Gabriel took note of the killing and began studying Biko, reading three biographies about him. For this song, instead of telling the story from Biko's perspective, Gabriel takes a third person observer approach. He explained in an interview with Sound to promote the album: "It's a white, middle-class, ex-public schoolboy, domesticated, English person observing his own reactions from afar. It seemed impossible to me that the South Africans had let him be killed when there had been so much international publicity about his imprisonment. He was very intelligent, well reasoned and not full of hate. His writings seemed very solid in a way that polarized politics often doesn't."

When Gabriel sings "yihla moja," he's singing in Xhosa, which is a language spoken in South Africa, notably by activist Nelson Mandela.

This song was released as a single but flopped on the charts. Recording the song had a profound effect on Gabriel, however, and it led to his commitment to world music and to various political causes. He called the song "a calling card announcing I was interested and prepared to get involved." "Biko" had an impact on other musicians as well: Steve Van Zandt heard it in a Los Angeles movie theater in 1980 and began wondering what he could do to help the cause, which led to him organizing "Sun City." Bono of U2 asked Gabriel to join the Amnesty International Conspiracy Of Hope tour in 1986, which played six shows and raised $2.6 million.