POPA GPAD
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POPA GPAD

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Band Pop Singer/Songwriter

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GPAD's first album, "Hopping to Glory", is now in progress and is due to be released this coming summer.

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Bio

When GPAD, sitting at his computer working on his music, of course, and listening to Latino 96.3 FM — Southern California’s hottest reggaeton and hip-hop radio station — heard his song “El Campeon” blast through the speakers of his home stereo, he jumped for joy and thanked God with all his heart and soul. For yet another dream had come true for this Anglo-South American who calls himself “Guyana’s Prodigal Son”.

AT THE AGE OF FIVE, GPAD made a discovery that would change his life forever. His father was flipping through the stations on an old Philips radio in the living room of their home in Mocha-Arcadia, Guyana, South America's only English-speaking country, when he stumbled upon a Venezuelan program. "What language is that, Daddy?" GPAD asked the old man, who shares the same initials with his son.
"It’s Spanish," George Percival Adolphus Dover answered. "Why, do you like it?"
"Like it" was an understatement.

Using the old Philips as his first Spanish and music teacher, GPAD would show his father that he actually loved Spanish! And over the following years, he immersed himself in learning the primary language of his continent, its music, and its culture. By the time he hit his teens, he had already learned the continental language to the point of earning among many of his high school colleagues the nickname, "The Spaniard." His father, a passionate music lover himself and former church choir singer, later built a radiogram using the old Philips, and would amass hundreds of 45s and LPs of the latest hits of the day — from reggae, calypso, and R&B to disco, Latin, and Indian music.
"There was no want for music during childhood to fill my free time," GPAD recalls. "My older brothers used to throw dancehall parties featuring the top musical groups and bands in the country, and I'd just sit there watching them perform and dreaming of one day being on the microphone myself, singing to massive crowds in both Spanish and English."

And, as the saying goes, “Dreams do come true!” At the age of seventeen, GPAD won a government of Guyana academic scholarship to Cuba. There, in Havana, he spent five years living, studying, and, as he puts it, “mastering once and for all the language of my soul and absorbing the sweet rhythms of Afro-Cuban music." But not only did he soak up this great musical tradition, he also organized, promoted, produced, and performed in theatrical, poetic, and musical acts within the Havana college and university circuit. After graduating college in Havana with the honor of co-writing the first thesis to have ever been developed for the design of a “tobera” in the history of naval construction in Cuba, GPAD returned to his native Guyana to work as a lecturer in the Maritime Corps of the Guyana Defence Force, and as a freelance journalist for the New Nation newspaper. But his heart remained in music and poetry. So in 1985, forced by a political climate that stifled the arts in Guyana, he moved to the USA.

During the late eighties and throughout the nineties, GPAD grabbed at every opportunity he could to perform his poetry and music: house parties; the Afrikaan Poetry Theatre; The Moon Café; The Sunday Tea Party; Poetry In Motion; The Clive Hudson Show on WLIB Radio; numerous performances at York College, CUNY, where he also earned a double BA in English and African American Studies; and QPTV's "WORD! A Poetry Showcase". He even once hosted "The Black Table Forum", a QPTV political talk show; and interned on CBS's Biography. In 2000, GPAD sang with a local Long Island band at Southampton College, LIU, where he also earned a master’s degree in fine arts. In 2001, he performed spoken-word poetry at the Hampton House; and in that same year moved to California, where he has since been performing at The Psycho Babble Café, clubs, and house parties.

All this may sound like it has been an obstacle-free road to success for GPAD, but it really hasn’t. For him it has been a journey of unrelenting struggle from birth. He was born with only one foot, a deformed left thumb and index finger, and tied tongue — a speech impediment that he overcame at the age of 10. Little wonder therefore, why this fluently “trilingual” (Spanish/English/Creolese) artist so passionately and convincingly extols the virtues of "survival", "never giving up", "mind over matter" and "belief in one's self" in many of his soul-searching songs! (“With missing foot and crooked hand I came/So dem call meh handicap and dem call meh lame/Some claim I couldn’t do this/Some claim that I couldn’t do that/But disability is just a state of mind/If it’s weak you gonna fall behind/A lesson that I learned from birth/Through love and self-worth/How to stand up strong, be a man/And make it in this land). With equal passion and conviction, he also uses his music to clamor for equality, peace, love, unity, and liberty among all human creatures. "My music is a soulful cornucopia of R&B, reggae, Latin, ringbang, country, calypso, A