Van Gordon Martin – ‘Let it Grow’

Chicago native Van Gordon Martin is a dedicated guitarist with a love of reggae, dub, and soul music, who started his career at the age of seven. His first job was polishing and stringing guitars in a local music shop, which he followed up by playing them, mentored by Bernie Worrell, the legendary keyboardist of Parliament Funkadelic and Talking Heads fame. Van felt the need to spread his wings, and moved to Boston, where his career in music took off.

A veteran of the US east coast music scene for over a decade, Van Gordon Martin is a member of Boston’s reggae collective Dub Apocalypse, Club Def’l (a Moroccan/jazz/electronic group), and hip hop artist Big Daddy Kane’s live band – among many others. Van also co-founded Spiritual Rez, a project with which he toured extensively until 2011. Musically he takes his inspiration from reggae and soul music, while being inspired by positive vibes and live performance. In his words,

“my musical goal is to share my story, and love for guitar with the world.”

Van Gordon Martin’s song, ‘Let It Grow’, the title track of his latest album, released this month, and its video, revolve around bringing back life to a city. The animated clip allows VGMs imagination to tell the story both visually and lyrically; his animated self spreads love and life throughout the city, watering the growing greenery with a walking watering can, trailing along behind him. The plants grow, spreading their roots and branches, with some transforming into instruments.

You can find out more about Van Gordon Martin online on his official website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and SoundCloud accounts.

Let It Grow (official video)

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About the author

Lisa has been writing for over 20 years, starting as the entertainment editor on her university newspaper. Since then she's written for Popwrapped, Maximum Pop, Celebmix, and ListenOnRepeat.

Lisa loves all good music, with particular fondness for Jedward and David Bowie. She's interviewed Edward Grimes (Jedward), Kevin Godley, Trevor Horn, Paul Young, Peter Cox (Go West), Brendan B Brown (Wheatus), Bruce Foxton (The Jam), among many many more. Lisa is also available for freelance writing - please email lisa@essentiallypop.com

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