Sting

Sting is one of those artists who could have stayed comfortable forever and chose, again and again, the hard road.

He was the brain behind The Police, one of the biggest bands in the world, and at the absolute summit he left it to strike out alone towards jazz, classical music and the sounds of the whole planet.

He has one of the finest voices and one of the finest ears for melody in pop, and he put both at the service of a curiosity that never went out.

From delivering milk to the classroom

Before he was Sting he was Gordon Sumner, the son of a milkman from Wallsend, a town in the north-east of England, land of shipyards and the working class. As a boy he helped his father on the dawn round.

And before music he had a whole life: he was a bus conductor, a building labourer, a tax officer, and finally a schoolteacher, with small children, for two years in Cramlington.

The nickname the world knows him by was given to him by the leader of a local jazz band, because of a black and yellow striped jumper that made him look like a wasp. Sting, the stinger.

While he taught by day, at night he played bass in jazz bands around the area. That crossing —the serious teacher and the jazz musician, discipline and adventure— would stay with him always.

The punk who knew too much

In 1977 he moved to London and formed The Police with Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers.

They were, in theory, part of the punk wave, but there was a difference: they could play far too well. Sting was a sophisticated bass player and a songwriter with a goldsmith's ear, and they mixed punk with reggae and an elegance that punk despised.

With songs like "Roxanne", "Message in a Bottle" and above all "Every Breath You Take", The Police became one of the biggest bands on the planet.

And then, in 1984, at the highest point, Sting did the unthinkable: he left.

The leap into the void

Here is the nuance that defines who he is.

Most people, having the biggest band in the world, cling to it until the end. Sting did the opposite: at thirty-three, with The Police at the summit, he left it to begin a far riskier career.

His first album, "The Dream of the Blue Turtles", from 1985, he recorded by surrounding himself with real jazz musicians, people who came from another world: Branford Marsalis on saxophones, Kenny Kirkland on keyboards, Darryl Jones on bass, Omar Hakim on drums.

It was a leap into the void, and it came off.

From then on his music never stopped expanding: jazz, classical music, rhythms from all over the planet. "Englishman in New York" —the affectionate portrait of a foreigner who doesn't fit in but stays true to himself—, "Fields of Gold" and "Shape of My Heart" showed a songwriter growing ever more subtle and more literary.

And he never stopped experimenting: in 2006 he recorded, alongside the lutenist Edin Karamazov, an entire album of Renaissance music by John Dowland, something no rocker in his commercial right mind would do.

Sting does whatever he likes, and does it well.

The song about the women who dance alone

And there is a chapter that touches us closely.

Sting was not an ivory-tower artist. With his wife Trudie Styler he founded the Rainforest Foundation in 1989, at the request of the Kayapó leader Raoni, to protect the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous peoples, and in 1988 he toured with Amnesty International for human rights.

But the most moving thing for our part of the world is a song: "They Dance Alone", from 1987.

He wrote it about the Chilean women of the Association of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared, who danced the cueca alone, with the photographs of their husbands, sons and brothers pinned to their chests. He had come across that ritual during the Amnesty tour the year before.

It is worth saying it precisely, because it matters: the song is not a cueca. It is a ballad that alludes to the cueca sola, that gesture of dancing with nobody in front of you because the other person was taken away. The subtitle it was released with says so: "Cueca Solo".

An Englishman took our pain, our ritual and our disappeared women, and told the whole world what had happened. The song was banned in Chile. Years later, with democracy restored, Sting danced a few steps at the Estadio Nacional with one of those women.

That a global musician of that stature should look this way, towards our dead, says a great deal about the kind of artist he is.

What to remember

Sting is the proof that you can have an enormous talent and, on top of that, never fall asleep on it.

A milkman's son who became a teacher, turned into a world star, and instead of repeating the winning formula spent his life leaping towards the unknown: from punk to jazz, from reggae to the Renaissance lute, from pop to the symphony orchestra.

If you play "Every Breath You Take", "Englishman in New York", "Fields of Gold" or "Shape of My Heart", you will hear one of the best melodists in pop, a man with an unmistakable voice and an intelligence that was never satisfied.

He didn't stay the man he already was; he went on becoming someone new, album after album, decade after decade.

And that restlessness —the restlessness of the teacher who never stops studying— is, perhaps, his greatest lesson.

Sources

Sting (Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner; Wallsend, Northumberland, England, 2 October 1951), musician, singer, songwriter and actor. Son of the milkman Ernest Matthew Sumner; he qualified as a teacher in 1973 and taught for two years at St Paul's First School in Cramlington, after working as a bus conductor, a building labourer and a tax officer; he played jazz in local bands in the north-east of England (Phoenix Jazzmen, Last Exit). His nickname was given to him by Gordon Solomon, leader of the Phoenix Jazzmen, because of a black and yellow striped jumper that made him look like a wasp. In 1977 he founded The Police with Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, the band with which —as vocalist, bassist and main songwriter— he achieved enormous success before leaving it in 1984, at its peak. He began his solo career in 1985 with "The Dream of the Blue Turtles", recorded with a band of jazz players recruited in New York: Branford Marsalis, Kenny Kirkland, Darryl Jones and Omar Hakim. Among his later hits: "Englishman in New York", "Fields of Gold" and "Shape of My Heart". In 2006 he released "Songs from the Labyrinth", with works by the Renaissance composer John Dowland, alongside the lutenist Edin Karamazov. "They Dance Alone (Cueca Solo)", from "...Nothing Like the Sun" (1987), released as a single on 2 September 1988, is dedicated to the Chilean women of the Association of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared: it alludes to the ritual of the cueca sola, although musically it is not a cueca but a ballad; Sting learned of the ritual through Amnesty International's Conspiracy of Hope tour (1986). The song was banned in Chile, and years later Sting danced a few steps with one of the members of the Association at the Estadio Nacional. He co-founded the Rainforest Foundation in 1989 with Trudie Styler, at the request of the Kayapó leader Raoni, and took part in 1988 in Amnesty International's Human Rights Now! tour. Counting his solo career and The Police together, he has sold more than 100 million records and won 17 Grammy awards. The Police have a profile of their own on Rebobinados. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Readings of the meaning of his work are offered as the author's interpretation. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, grammy.com, Songfacts, Polar Music Prize and other press coverage.