Pete Lockett
British musician
Pete Lockett is an English percussionist and recording artist. He retired from performance and commercial recording in 2022. Lockett is known as a versatile and prolific percussionist, collaborating with many artists. He is well-versed in percussion traditions from music cultures around the world, from traditional Carnatic and Hindustani music of North and South India to traditional Japanese taiko drumming, with a style ranging from blues, funk and rock to classical, folk and ethnic and from Arabic to Electronic. His instruments include tabla, mridangam, kanjira, ghatam, vocal percussion, dholak, naal, bhangra dhol from north and south India; darabuka, req, bendir, frame-drums from the Middle East; congas, bongos, timbales and berimbau from Latin American; as well as the Irish bodhran, Nigerian udu, West African djembe, Japanese taiko, Western drum set, and many custom percussion effects and self-built instruments. He also works extensively with electronics and samplers, both live and in the studio, to create densely alternative percussion fabrics.
Youth
Lockett grew up in Portsmouth, Hampshire, to a non-musical family. He began studying at the age of 19 when he passed a drum shop one day and took a lesson. Lockett found music to be exhilarating, eventually moving to London two years later to pursue a career in the field. He stumbled upon Indian music in the (nineteen) eighties at a Festival of India concert featuring Ali Akbar Khan and Zakir Hussain and became curious about the musical legacies of the country." He then studied with “Yousuf Ali Khan" and “Karaikudi Krishnamurthy.”
Career
He has recorded and/or performed with many artists including, Björk, Afro Celt Sound System, Peter Gabriel, Robert Plant, The Verve, Amy Winehouse, Pet Shop Boys, Sinéad O'Connor, Nitin Sawhney, Zakir Hussain, Steve Smith, U Shrinivas, Amit Chatterjee, Jeff Beck, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Mekaal Hasan, Craig Armstrong, Roxy Music’s Phil Manzarena and A.R. Rahman amongst many others.
The public source identifies “Pete Lockett” as british musician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Pete, Lockett and British.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2073285. VIAF identifies the subject as 45145971391932330321. The Library of Congress control number is n2004069600. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pete Lockett” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.