untitled

27 guide 14-20 Oct 2017 music

music

Queen were founded only

two years after Conservative

politician Enoch Powell’s

notorious “rivers of blood

speech” and racism towards

immigrants was intense. So a

whitewash of his Asian origins

may have been an astute

commercial move. “Being

perceived as Indian or ‘foreign’

was clearly a disadvantage,”

argued journalist Palash Ghosh

in 2011. “Luckily for Freddie,

with his white skin and dark

brown hair he was physically

indistinguishable from any

European (or indeed, any

British) man.”

A few years ago, his

brother-in-law Roger

Cooke sought to

explain Mercury’s

attitude towards his roots: “To

an English mind, Asian means

Indian. It doesn’t in Freddie’s

particular case; he was Persian

by ancestry. He was accused of

denying his Indian heritage. I

don’t think he ever did, but if he

did, it would have been because

he was Persian.”

Mercury himself never spoke

publicly on the subject, yet at his

funeral in 1991, two white-robed

Parsee priests officiated. Mercury

had arranged the ceremony to

be in keeping with his parents’

wishes. His mother said in 2011:

“Freddie was a Parsee and he was

proud of that.” 

Bohemian Rhapsody will be

released next year

Stuart Jeff ries

here is a sweet black-

and-white photograph

of Farrokh Bulsara

from 1946 in a pram in the

garden of his Indian parents’

home in Zanzibar, then a British

protectorate. When he died,

45 years later, very few of the

millions mourning knew him

by that name; by then he’d

become Freddie Mercury, Queen

frontman. A forthcoming biopic

called Bohemian Rhapsody

will focus on the singer’s life

after he formed Queen, but it

would be a shame if it ended up

whitewashing Farrokh’s story.

So how did Farrokh become

Freddie, you ask? His parents,

Jer and Bomi, were Parsees

whose ancestors came from

Persia. India-born Bomi went

to work in Zanzibar as a registrar

for the colonial government,

taking his wife Jer with him.

When their son was eight,

they sent Farrokh to a British

boarding school near their home

city of Bombay. After leaving

school, their son was known by

his nickname , Freddie. When

Zanzibar became independent

in 1963, there was a revolution

in which the wealthier Indian

population was targeted, so his

parents fled with Freddie and

his younger sister Kashmira to

London. It was while studying

at college a few years later

that he met Queen’s other

founding members. When

they began touring, he

adopted Mercury as his

surname and his Asian

upbringing faded into the

background.

Will the upcoming

Hollywood Freddie

Mercury biopic be

a whitewash?

Mercury in

retrospect

T

Radio goo-goo

Freddie as a baby; and

(below) Rami Malek as Freddie

CORTESY KASHMIRA COOKE

music

Radio goo-goo

Freddie as a baby; and

(below) Rami Malek as Freddie