There may come a day when people around the world hit the dancefloor and groove to the Bermy Stomp. It’s a song-and-line dance created by the Reverend Gavin Tyte. While that may surprise some, for parishioners at St Mark’s Church ― or anyone who knows him as “Rev Gav” ― it’s exactly what they would expect.

The idea struck him during the Bermuda Pride parade last August. Dancing near the front with his wife, Helen, he watched in amazement as people moved in perfect sync, putting on a show.

“Line dancing is really big [here] and I thought it would be really cool if there was something specific for Bermuda,” he said.

Days later he got to work on Stomp, a dance track he put together in the late 1980s.

“The music was a baseline I’d had kicking around in my head for years ― I think from when I was about 17. But then it kind of got lost in the annals of time. I thought, ‘Let's reproduce that sound and produce a track around it’.”

From that, he created both a club and radio version, renaming it Bermuda Stomp. A dinner party with friends helped decide the accompanying moves, though they evolved over time.

Somewhere along the way it hit him that something was missing ― clear instructions to guide dancers through each step.

“You can actually march to it, but there are moves [and] the moves are great. So the Bermy Stomp’s great on its own, but when you see it with the moves [you really get it]. When we have parties at our house and we put it on and everybody dances, it's good fun,” he said.

“And then once we came up with the moves we thought, right, let's put some lyrics over the top to say what the moves are.”

The song gives clear direction but, mindful that dancers might not be familiar with steps like the “railway trail” and “the gombey”, the ever-popular minister is already exploring plans for an instructional video to make learning the routine easier.

His big ambition is to get everyone on the island doing it.

“I’d love to have people from all over Bermuda film themselves dancing ― the fire stations, the police, the church, the bishop, anybody, really.

“Schoolchildren, care homes … anyone could send in their videos. Then, I could take clips from all of them and produce a proper music video. That would be the ultimate dream."

Having always been “super creative” his musical passion began long before he arrived in Bermuda in April 2020 – just before the pandemic locked the island down.

In addition to being a music producer and sound engineer who taught music technology at the degree level, he was a pioneer in the beatboxing scene.

Previously a professional beatboxer, he created the genre’s first tutorials. His passion continues today – Rev Gav is a regular judge at the World Beatboxing Championships and is known for developing Beatboxology, a visual method for mapping beatboxing sounds

Once he entered ministry in Bermuda, he continued to produce an impressive array of songs.

“I have made hundreds of performances and taken workshops all over the world ― schools, universities, festivals, clubs, churches, youth clubs and prisons.

“I beatbox every day ― in the shower, driving the car. I'm sure it must drive everyone around me nuts,” is how he describes his zest for entertainment on Bandcamp, one of the streaming sites that hosts Bermy Stomp.

Although he’s kept busy ministering to his parish, it’s a necessary outlet for someone with a creative personality like his.

“I'm writing daily reflections. I'm writing weekly messages ― we run an online church, the Fab Church, as well as [St Mark’s]. Most of the music I'm doing is for church.

“St Mark’s uses a lot of backing tracks; I do a lot of synth pop [and] electronic backing tracks to go with our music at church. But Bermy Stomp [was really because] line dancing is really big in Bermuda and we thought it would be really cool if there was something actually for Bermuda,” he said.

“Now, whether anybody's interested or not, I don't know, but it was just fun to produce something. It's got [mentions of] Gombeys in there, some other Bermuda references, and the moves are really great.

“We have friends who do it every week in their Zumba class because they love it, because the moves are so much fun.”

• Listen to Bermy Stomp on Bandcamp and SoundCloud