Judge on The Voice-style show now busking in Southampton city centre

An award-nominated artist who has appeared on the Botswanan version of The Voice is busking in Southampton.

Gappy Roberts moved to Southampton a year and a half ago after having a career in music producing in his home country.

A pastor’s son in a family of ten siblings, he grew up singing in the choir at his father’s church.

He started producing soul and Afrobeat music at the age of 18 and throughout his career, he was nominated three times for the BOMU awards, a highly regarded prize in Botswana.

He was also nominated for his producing work in the country’s Yama award – but missed out on claiming the gong.

In 2017 and 2018, the 27-year-old was a judge in the nation’s ‘My Star Botswana’ show – the equivalent of The Voice in the UK.

However, he was never able to fully make a living from his music as the country’s industry remains traditional and not open to modern music styles.

In 2021, his father – one of his biggest supporters – died which led him to question whether he should pursue his musical career.

“In my country, I was always paid with compliments, but I never actually was able to make money from music,” Gappy told the Echo.

“And with my father passing away I had some time to reflect on what I wanted to do.”

He stopped producing for two years but decided to give it one last try.

At his cousin’s invitation, he moved to the UK in January last year to chase his dream and started busking in the city.

He took some time to start out playing again but earlier this year he started busking in the city centre.

On his first day playing for the crowds, in May this year, he spent four hours in Above Bar Street busking but did not gather much traction.

READ MORE: Meet the father and son ‘living the dream’ with their music​

However, two weeks later he began to attract people’s attention.

He said: “People stopped and others were sitting down. I started to travel to different cities and busk on different days and people were enjoying it”.

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Since then, he has busked in Brighton, Portsmouth, as well as Piccadilly Cirus and Leicester Square in London.

Gappy had his music played on BBC Music Introducing on Radio Solent.

He has now been able to make a living from music, by busking his original songs as well as covers.

Speaking to the Echo, he said: “I started with four pence and two people listening to me in the streets and now it has come to the point of travelling to Portsmouth and crowds of 40 people wait for me to perform.

“In the last four months, it has been very exciting what I have been able to do and I’m looking forward to what is ahead.”