“I respect Muslims, I respect Christians and I respect Jews, [but] religion is a business that exploits the faith of the believers, and I don’t want anything between me and my creator.”Despised by African politicians, targeted by religious zealots, but loved by internationalists and deprived communities, Blondy arrives in London this weekend for one of the biggest concerts of his career.The son of a Christian father and Muslim mother, the singer was brought up by his grandmother in the rural hinterland of Ivory Coast, where his friends knew him as Kone Seydou. He attended a Koranic school, which he now derides for its “brainwashing” programme of learning prayer by rote rather than preparing students to be “doctors, teachers, mathematicians”.Ivory Coast’s position at a cultural and geographic crossroads meant that Blondy developed a broad taste in music. Like many young Francophones, he grew to love the music of the French rocker Johnny Hallyday, but also “Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, The Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead…”In search of rock’n'roll and dreaming of a career as a professor of English, Blondy took his first journey outside Africa and flew to New York. There he underwent a life-changing experience, watching one of reggae’s founding fathers, Burning Spear, perform in Central Park “I was very impressed. I had never heard the power of 100,000 Watts and that was the sound I wanted,” he recalls “I love the village voice Burning Spear has.

He’s a guy from the farm and I’m a country boy from Dimbokro in the Ivory Coast.” For an African away from home, the message of Rastafarianism had special resonance. “Rastafarians were glorifying Africa and that was very important for my own identity as an African,” he says. Starting a musical career, he took his new first name from the Bible. His second was his grandmother’s mispronunciation of his childhood French nickname, Bandit.But four years in America took its toll on his mental health “My computer just jammed,” he says “I had never worked in my life back home. In America, I had to pay my school fees by working part-time as a clerk and as a messenger at the Ivory Coast embassy, and at night in the clubs. It was too much for me to do, for an African lost in the American concrete jungle.”He asked to be repatriated, but his problems were not solved by his return to Africa.

His dreadlocks and Rastafarian teachings attracted bewilderment and suspicion. Ultimately, it was the elders who embraced his use of African proverbs sung in Mandingo and Ashanti dialects over reggae rhythms “The old people said, ‘He’s not crazy He’s saying things that your parents understand. He’s very wise.’”Appearances on Ivorian television boosted the success of his first album, Jah Glory, and paved the way for him to go to Jamaica and record with The Wailers at Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong studios “It was like getting a reggae diploma,” he says. “The first time I was there, I saw Ziggy [Marley's son] as a child. Family Man [The Wailers' bassist Aston Barrett] is still a good friend.” Jamaica was a home from home: “When you are in Jamaica, you don’t feel lost in a foreign country. People talk loud and when you see them talk you think they might fight and then they burst into laughter. It’s Africa!”Albums such as Cocody Rock (1984) and Apartheid is Nazism (1985) brought him a huge fan base in Africa and Paris and gave him a passport to the world.

In 1985, he went to Israel to see the holy sites described in the Bible and Koran, the two books he carries with him. After warnings that he might face hostility, the warmth of his welcome reduced him to tears “I wanted to see this land that gave birth to Jesus. I went to the Holy Sepulchre, the Mosque, the Wailing Wall.” The importance of Jerusalem to Jew, Muslim and Christian alike helped to shape his own religious beliefs. “Spiritually speaking, if you are a believer, Israel is the proof that there’s only one God.” A year later he released the album Jerusalem, a hit in Israel and around the world.Blondy refuses to align himself with any religion – including Rastafarianism – and is scathing of the “prevaricators” of any creed that claim to be God’s intermediaries.