GROWING UP AS A BLACK KID IN TYRONE
Talented young pop singer and Across the Line presenter Gemma Bradley tells David O’dornan about the challenges she faced being a mixed race child in Co Tyrone and her new single Obsessed
Pop singer and radio host Gemma Bradley, who last year became the first black presenter on BBC Radio Ulster, has a real sense of purpose. “I want to be a role model for people of colour,” she says. The 23-year-old was one of a number of fresh faces brought into the Beeb, along with the likes of the much-missed Stephen Clements, in what was the station’s biggest shake-up to its schedule in recent history.
Singer Gemma joined the team on Across The Line, the show that champions the local music scene where she herself is a rising star, having just released her latest single Obsessed last week (ironically, though understandably to her evident delight, the track is getting a lot of airplay on rival commercial stations like Cool FM).
Her path to the radio and recording studios has been quite a remarkable journey.
Gemma was born in Stoke-onTrent before moving, at the age of seven, to her mum Patricia’s native Draperstown, Co Tyrone.
Her English father is of Jamaican descent and now that she is fast approaching a year at the BBC, an institution committed to reflecting and representing the diversity of the UK, her heritage is something that has become more important to Gemma herself the longer she has been there.
“Initially, I didn’t really think about it, to be honest, but now that I have been in the role more and I’ve settled in, it does,” she explains.
“It is important to me because I want to be a role model for people of colour to show that you can go places, you can do things like this and that there is somebody out there representing you, and especially in Northern Ireland as well because, you know, the population is mostly white so it’s nice to be able to represent for other people as well.”
Moving from an English city to a rural village on the other side of the Irish Sea wasn’t quite the culture shock it could have been as she had regularly visited the area before with her mum.
But looking back now from the perspective of a young woman at a time when it’s easier to be vocal about such experiences, she recognises that she experienced racism growing up here, even though she might not have understood it as a child.
“I would say that I don’t think it was difficult for me,” she explains. “Growing up I played sports and had a lot friends and I was quite lucky that way.
“But, I mean, I have experienced racism in Northern Ireland and even things you don’t notice when you’re younger and then you think back and you’re like, ‘Oh, actually — that was a bit racist,’ you know?
“I’m talking about name calling or even I would have been asked a lot, ‘Where are you from?’ and I would tell them Draperstown and they would be like, ‘No, but where are you actually from?’
“That kind of thing, challenging you that way... and I used to get that from adults when I was a child. When I think back to it, I’m shocked that that was allowed.”
It’s an issue that has become one of the major talking points of 2020, with the Black Lives Matter campaign and associated protests in the United States gathering momentum and becoming a global concern in response to racism.
Gemma says: “I think that there is a lot of stuff happening in the world right now and a lot of people are being a bit more opinionated or a bit more outspoken about things that are their opinions.
“And, again, I think a lot of it comes down to lack of education and just being brought up and normalising things — be seen as one rather than when people are different calling out their differences, I definitely think that is wrong.
“It’s an issue that is ongoing, but all that we can do is try to educate people and then try and focus on the positive things as well and I think that will help immensely.”
As a singer-songwriter and self-confessed social media lover, Gemma appreciates too that she is a role model for her music fans and strives to be real and genuine in how she looks and acts.
But she is honest enough to admit that as a teenager she herself succumbed to the pressure of being desperate to fit in with her peers — to the extent of taking drastic measures to try and tame her natural afro hair.
“I know myself when I was growing up in my teenage years that I wanted to be like my friends. I wanted to have long straight hair. I straightened my hair chemically and wore hair extensions.
“But now when I look back I’m like, ‘Gosh, that is not me at all.’ I think that’s definitely a teenage thing, people do find themselves eventually.
“But there is definitely a pressure, I think, on men and women online to look a certain way, to be a certain way, to have a certain presence.
“There’s all these influencers, people like that, and they work so hard on their social media but sometimes there’s people who have had plastic surgery and have done this and that to make themselves look the way they are. They’re using Photoshop, but young people are seeing that, and they’re thinking ‘This is what I want to be like’.
“But that’s not attainable because if it’s Photoshopped it’s not real. So there is a pressure and a lot of young people fall into that trap of wanting to look like somebody who technically isn’t real.
“I think it’s just important to remember, not everything you see online is real and it is better to be present in your own world.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love social media, I’m glued to my phone! But it’s also good to be present.
“I couldn’t not be me, if that makes sense, because you’d be able to tell by my face — I’m a horrible liar! My face gives everything away so I could not even try to pretend to be myself and I think you see people and you know yourself when you see someone and they’re not being their natural self.
“I think it’s important for everyone to just embrace who they are — be yourself because that’s when you’re at your best.”
Gemma’s musical journey began when she first picked up a guitar aged just eight, a year after moving to Co Tyrone, and she credits fellow Draperstown local Paddy Glasgow with being her mentor.
He put her on the bill aged 15 at his Glasgowberry festival and, as if she wasn’t busy enough, she is still involved with his Glasgowberry Cornstore Creative Hub today as a guitar and vocal teacher.
Now living in Belfast with her boyfriend of three and a half years, James, a chef from Omagh, since lockdown she hasn’t been able to get back to see her mum and teach face-to-face, so she has been doing lessons online
instead. But performing is the first love of this talented pop and R&B artist and she’s delighted that despite the pandemic she has managed to put out that aforementioned newly released summer single Obsessed, which is her third release, but first record, for two years.
“I hadn’t released music for the last two years but in that space I had been gigging loads and writing lots of new music because I was trying to find where I wanted to go as an artist.
“I’ve been working with loads of different writers as well and writing on my own so it’s been going good and I’ve always kept myself in the scene. I managed to play Electric Picnic festival last year, things like that, so I’ve always been very active in the music scene. “Lockdown happened and I thought, ‘Do you know what, why not just release music and see what happens?’ Put it out to the world, nothing to lose, it’s been long enough — two years is a long time not to release music.
“I’ve got Obsessed now and the reaction has been so brilliant, it’s been a lot more than I could have ever hoped for. All I wanted, I guess, was people to know I was releasing music again but I’ve been blown away by the positive reaction.”
Her undoubted musical ability saw her crowned as the 2018 winner of the Christie Hennessy Prize and featured on the Glastonbury 2020 Emerging Talent Longlist.
Gemma adds: “To get on the longlist this year was a great achievement for me, especially with being from Northern Ireland too because there’s a lot of people from England, which is a whole bigger population.
“And obviously, the festival is in England too so it’s just been nice to be able to, I guess, break through and get a couple of industry people over the water to hear my music and get to know my name.”
Now, as she juggles her pop career with radio presenting, something she says she has “definitely fallen in love with”, she might just follow in the footsteps of local broadcasters Colin Murray and fellow Co Tyrone host Phil Taggart by moving to Radio 1.
She certainly has the skill-set and self-confidence to go to the top in both careers — she jokes that her ambition is “world domination”.
Gemma adds: “I would love to be able to get my music heard here, there and everywhere and the same with the radio, I will try my best to go as far as I can with that as well.
“Like I say, I love them both and I think they actually work really well together — so, world domination!”