‘Underage clubbing helped me overcome bullying’
GOK WAN SAYS MUSIC IMPORTANT AS HE CAME TO ACCEPT HERITAGE AND SEXUALITY
GOK Wan says underage clubbing helped him to come to accept his sexuality and mixed-race heritage.
The TV presenter and DJ from Whetstone starting attending house music parties in his hometown and across the Midlands while a teenager.
The 46-year-old said the experience helped him to find a “community within the music” and ignore the bullying he faced at school.
“House music for me was incredible,” he said. “It was a huge part of my growing up and developing into a young adult because I found a community within music.
“I was very young, I was going to clubs underage. I am going to be very honest about it. I am not very proud of it but I did, like many people.
“I had such a terrible time at school, just an awful time of being bullied. I felt like I wasn’t worthy and felt victimised.
“I was dealing with my sexuality, I was dealing with so many different things and then all of a sudden I found a room of people who didn’t care what I looked like.
“They didn’t care that I was camp, they didn’t care that I was mixedrace, they just cared that I loved the music.
“It was such an important part of my very young informative years.”
Since April, Gok has been streaming Isolation Nation DJ sets from his kitchen and teamed up with club promoters Glitterbox and Comic Relief for a Red Nose Rave yesterdday.
Aired from the Royal Albert Hall, it featured leading house music DJs Melvo
Baptiste and The Shapeshifters, with vocals from Teni Tinks.
Gok said he stopped listening to dance music because of his busy work schedule but reconnected with the genre about 10 years ago.
He said: “I guess there was a part of me – I haven’t even really thought about this, I am having a bit of an epiphany now – but there was probably a part of me that thought that because I was getting older I wasn’t allowed to listen to that music because it was so synonymous with my youth.
“Of course that is complete rubbish. That is something I told myself. Nobody had told me that. “Then about 10, maybe 15, years ago I remember getting out some old music and thinking ‘Oh my god’ and it was Don Pablo’s Animals and it was a remix of Venus. An incredible track.
“I remember Grooverider playing it at a club called Amnesia back in the 90s. It took me back there.
“I saw the lasers and the smoke and the big sound system and it was phenomenal.
“So house music is absolutely at my core. It really is. It has told my story, it has allowed me to tell my story and it will continue to tell my story.
“I get to now play music – my favourite music – to other people that love it.
“That is one of the secrets of Isolation Nation, because we have sometimes three or four generations of a family in a kitchen on a Saturday night.”
I was dealing with so many things and then I found a room of people who didn’t care what I looked like