SEAN BURKE
Biography
Sean was born on 27 March 1970 in the industrial town of Uitenhage, the second child of John and Cathleen Burke. John, was the founder and leader of a pop band, The Invaders which along with bands like The Flames, thrilled audiences all over South Africa in the late 60's and early 70's. Sean's earliest memory of his father was of seeing him with the likes of Jonathan Butler and Ronnie Joyce, when he promoted gigs for them. John died in 1978 when Sean was 8 years old. Life was tough growing up. Sean's mother, a 28-year old widow raised four children on the salary of an administration clerk, but they never went hungry, and their mother's determination gave all the children a hunger and ambition to succeed in life. He has a brother Mark and two sisters, Melanie and Viola, as well as three half-sisters, namely Lameesah, Vanessa and Yolande. After his father's death, he did not think about music much, and most of his childhood was spent participating in various sporting activities. Sean excelled in cricket, table tennis, athletics and soccer, for which he achieved provincial colours. In 1987 he became close friends with a classmate Danny Williams, a DJ-rapper-breakdancer and slowly found himself drawn to rap and club music. Sean was awarded two bursaries to study Law at the University of Port Elizabeth in 1988, and at the end of that year he received a surplus pay out from these bursaries. This money was used to buy second-hand mobile DJ equipment, and for the next 2 years he spent DJ-ing with Danny on weekends at different venues around the Eastern Cape. He soon grew bored with playing other artists' music and wanted to create his own tracks and consequently dropped out of university in 1991 and started working as a human resourcesl officer at a factory in Port Elizabeth in order to finance his dream of producing music. With his earnings he bought a sequencer (a music computer) and a keyboard and started a rap group in Uitenhage. He resigned from his job the following year and started performing cover versions in a local pub with Mercia Williams, Danny's sister. In 1994 a member of The Rasta Rebels spotted his talent and he moved to Johannesburg to be a vocalist in a new band to be formed on his arrival. He named the band Afro-d-Ziac, which grew into a seven-piece cover band that toured South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia. The band enjoyed a huge fan base, especially in Cape Town. Sean and Afro-d-Ziac performed the latest hits, and here he honed his skills and learnt different vocal techniques when he was called upon to sing reggae, dance, ragga, rap, r&b, techno, jazz, and even female vocal hits! During this time it became evident that computers were set to become the standard tool in music production, and he engaged in his computer learning curve. After almost 2 years on the road he quit the band to work with and get his original compositions recorded. He sent his demo tapes to the major record companies, but not a single A&R executive found the time to listen to his music. This sparked the realization that if he were going to make it with his music, he would have to do it by himself. During the latter half of 1995 he was introduced to a television director who allowed him to propose ideas for the opening and closing jingles of a new television series. The tracks were used and it led to more music compositions being commissioned by Urban Brew Studios, one of the biggest and most successful production houses in the South African television industry. His tunes were soon heard in television programmes including YOTV, Woza Weekend, Win & Spin, Bzzz, Disney's Roadhog and many others. With his musical soulmate and business partner, Mark Watson, he started a recording and publishing company called Amorfous Music, and they created commercial and DJ jingles for Metro FM and YFM DJ's like Sammy T, Bad Boy T, Pindi G and DJ Fresh. He completed a sound engineering course at the SABC during this period and started mixing (audio designing) television programmes on a full-time basis at Urban Brew Studios. During this time he started making plans to build his own recording studio, and to learn as much about the technical aspects of the television industry in order to shoot and edit his own music videos. In 1995 he married Nicole, the mother of his son, Chad, who is 9 years old. (After 7 years of marriage, Sean and Nicole decided to get divorced in March 2003). At the end of 1998, after the completion of his recording studio, he freelanced as a sound engineer in order to spend more time on his music. Sibusiso Mabuya joined the partnership in 1996 and added his expertise in the broadcast industry as a lighting engineer and vision controller.

In 2000 he completed a house album of original tracks for Mercia Williams, entitled "Do I Make You Nervous". The album was co-produced and written with his partner Mark Watson. Although it featured on television's Studio Mix Live and is still being flighted on Channel O, this album was fairly low key because it struggled to get radio airplay. This highlighted Sean's lack of experience in the commercial music field and proved a valuable experience because it taught him how the "system" works!

In 2001, Sean Burke completed his debut album entitled "DELICIOUS", which featured 15 hiphop, r&b, and house tracks.

2003 sees the release of his second album, entitled "ELUDAQUIT", which contains 18 original hiphop and R&B tracks.

Sean Burke has come full circle, and he has definitely arrived. He has followed his dream in an unrelenting manner. He has become a uniquely self sufficient artist who did not wait for a record deal to be thrown his way, but rather set out to own a record company. Sean Burke: businessman, music composer, artist, producer, sound engineer, graphic designer, video director and editor… Phew! Watch this space…