About michaelarkkofficial About Michael Arkk The amazing new CD "Easier Said" is now available for purchase and download through the brand new website: michaelarkk.co.uk. Picture a childhood of family cricket and 'kick the breadfruit' football, set amidst grassy valleys of small holdings growing coffee and bananas. Your father, a churchman, moves the family from parish to parish, each time in a rural setting, small farmers, with cassava, sugar cane, peas and goats. Michael tells us that his strongest memory of this time is of the relaxed life-style of the people among whom he lived, as he stole moments to listen to music his father hated and branded dangerous rags or 'jamma' songs. Church has always meant choirs. "If you could sing you would automatically find yourself in the choir." Indeed Michael's first band, 'The Mystic Circle' sang gospel throughout Jamaica. When they came to England they continued as 'The Channels of Praise', an eight piece band with four singers, performing extensively throughout the country. It was a potentially fatal illness which was to give Michael a 'new life' in a spiritual as well as a physical sense. He tells how touched he was to find that so many people cared, and, with love around him, he not only survived, but, "The visions I experienced brought me a true sense of understanding and peace." When Michael went 'solo' his music broadened to reflect his favourite influences, singers such as Gladys Knight, Sam Cooke, Mahalia Jackson, Toots and the Maytalls, Bob Marley, Elvis Presley and Jo Cocker. Michael's performances are a weaving together of the classic singing and spiritual moves he loves. His music vibrates in sparkling colours, radiating warmth and a fullness of spirit. Michael is also a poet. His first anthology "Congregation' is a collection of 94 soulful, yet sharply perceptive 'paintings' of the many facets of the human condition