In his teens Syd began performing with his brother Pete as "The Kitchen Brothers". His musical involvement with Pete lasted seven years during which they performed their own brand of acoustic folk music. They appeared at folk festivals around the country and were recorded as festival guests by
David Marks' SAFMA label and in their own right by the
SABC's World Service for external broadcast to North America, Europe, Japan and North Africa. By the late 1970s Pete Kitchen had moved on to a career outside of music, and in 1978 Syd formed
jazz-rock band Equinoxe. Then in 1979 Kitchen formed the experimental acoustic outfit "Harry was a Snake". In 1980 Kitchen embarked on a solo career and began working on a number of musical revues which included his own "S'No Good and the Reason Why" and two successful
Bob Dylan revues. During this time he continued writing not only songs, but also his own uniquely personal poetry and prose that had already sold more than 3000 copies when published as an anthology titled "Scars That Shine" a few years earlier. was Kitchen's first commercial recording aside from tracks on a few hopelessly rare ‘70s folk festival compilations. The album reflected Kitchen's increasingly politicised songwriting, while living in a repressive
apartheid regime. 1990 marked the first annual Splashy Fen, a folk festival which has become one of the most celebrated festivals on the African continent. For a number of South African music fans, the enduring memory of Syd Kitchen will be his performances at Splashy Fen each year from 1990 to 2010. Kitchen says of City Child: "It was also difficult to do in so far as the subject matter I was writing about was concerned. Some of the songs had been written as early as 1975, and some while the album was being made. I was going through a seriously tough time of personal shit that all helped shape the course of the work. This introspective spin, and the quality of the (mainly jazz) musicians involved, contributed to the album's eventual ambiance; 10 tight little quirky "jazz" tunes." Kitchen himself said of the album title: "I have coined the name AMAKOOL (the cool) to signify the way we can go about life unconcerned with the guy in the gutter. We can sit eating supper and watch seemingly unaffected as
CNN or the
BBC delivers graphic images of Rwandan "stick people" or the like into our de-sensitized lives. Our collective apathy is the product of what I call AMAKOOLOGIK (the cool logic). My naïve hope is that millions will hear that word and ask themselves one central question: Aren't you amazed that its so alive and still going on?""
Africa's Not for Sissies Africa's Not for Sissies is probably the album that has earned him most plaudits. Released in 2001 on Kitchen's own No Budget Records, the album received much critical acclaim and was nominated 4th in the SA Rock Digest's Top 30 Albums of 2001. In 2004 Kitchen embarked on a successful solo tour abroad during which he performed in England, Wales, Norway and Denmark, at among others, the Glastonbury Festival in England and the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in Norway.
Across 2007 saw Kitchen release what some call his finest album; Across consists of four long, solo
acoustic guitar instrumentals named after the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, each of which references, if sometimes obliquely, the musical elements that have got him to this point. Kitchen himself said of the film: " That is Josh Sternlicht's (Independent Filmmaker) take on my life. "
John Martyn Tribute Album About the last musical adventure of Kitchen's life was travelling to Scotland to record a version of the
John Martyn song, Fine Lines, along with members of Martyn's band Alan Thomson, Foster Paterson and his close friend Suzi Chunk for a Martyn tribute album destined to include a string of far better known artists than Kitchen himself. The tribute album featuring his cover of John Martyn's Fine Lines was released in 2011. The album also features
The Cure's Robert Smith, David Gray, Beck,
Paolo Nutini and
Phil Collins doing covers of Martyn's work. Martyn himself was apparently well aware of and quite taken with Kitchen's output. ==Personal life==