‘I knead the audience, like a baker! ’ House music legend Peven Everett on life after cancer and vanquishing the ‘Disco Sucks’ movement

A new documentary follows the Chicagoan from child trumpet prodigy to Gabriel-singing icon and DIY maverick. ‘Not everybody wants to see musical genius’, he says At We Out Here festival in Dorset in August, thousands of people could be heard singing a trumpet melody as if it was a giant brass-band karaoke session. On stage was Peven Everett, performing a rendition of Gabriel, one of the most celebrated anthems in dance-music history. Co-created with producer Roy Davis Jr, the best-known version, which blew up in UK clubs in the mid-90s, is a spiritual garage-house track about the “archangel of love” that can bring both punters and DJs to tears. But Everett is much more than one song.