Gilles Peterson  

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Gilles Peterson (born c. 1964) is an influential DJ and record-label owner from London, UK. Through his labels Acid Jazz and Talkin' Loud he has been associated with the careers of countless well-known artists of the 1990s such as Erykah Badu and Tony Rich. He is also well known as a radio DJ: he used to have a radio show on London's Kiss FM dance music station, but was recruited to the BBC's youth-oriented Radio 1 in 1998. Peterson is known for his eclectic musical selections. Though not as "anything goes" as the late John Peel, he plays anything from dub and reggae through jazz, nu-jazz, soul, neo soul, R&B to drum and bass, house, broken beat, hip-hop and Jazz-funk.

Widely acclaimed as a musical tastemaker, spreading his influence on music listeners around the world mostly through his Worldwide radio show, on BBC Radio 1 which is also broadcast live from the Radio 1 website as well as syndicated to radio stations all over the world, such as FM4 in Austria and Radio Helsinki in Finland, his British Airways in-flight entertainment shows and through his frequent gigs around the world. He has recently started a new record label called Brownswood - named after the house he had to move out of after his record collection became too big, and which now acts as a warehouse for his enormous collection of vinyl.

Contents

History

Attending The John Fisher School, in the mid- and late- 1980s, Gilles Peterson was already known on the London circuit as a DJ specialising in the new breed of "acid jazz", drawing on the jazz, funk and Latin fusions of the 1970s. First heard as a DJ on the London pirate radio station Solar, he went on to host the show 'Mad On Jazz' on BBC Radio London between 1986 and 1987, then ran a notable club night in Camden.

Dingwalls

That notable club, and one of Gilles Peterson's best remembered club sessions, was Talkin' Loud Sayin' Something at the old Dingwalls club in Camden, North West London which ran from the late 1980s until March 1991. The sessions were characterised by jazz dancers in suits hats and spats, heavyweight jazz dance classics including tracks from Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, Freddie Hubbard, Airto and Herbie Hancock and the anthemic 'n the fast lane' by Jean Luc Ponty; but the jazz was fused with hip-hop and the more experimental tracks. Gilles played alongside fellow London DJ Patrick Forge at most of the Dingwalls' sessions, as well as separately at many other underground club nights and music weekenders.

On October 8, 2006, both Gilles & Patrick played at a one-off show at the old site of Dingwalls (now a Jongleurs comedy club). A compilation album of popular songs from the club was also released at the same time, titled Sunday Afternoon At Dingwalls.

Jazz FM

In March 1990 Peterson became a disc jockey on London's first ever dedicated jazz station 102.2 Jazz FM, now known as Smooth FM. The three hour show was stripped into sections including the 'Samba 60' and the 'Vibrazone' and artists as diverse as Justin Warfield, Sergio Mendes and Leon Thomas would all appear on the same playlist. He was forced to leave the station after making anti-war comments during the 1st Gulf War.

Kiss 100 FM

September 1990 saw famous London pirate dance music station Kiss 100 FM become legal when it acquired a licence and started to broadcast from Holloway Road in North London. Patrick Forge was then given the space to create his own show, with the two DJs continuing to work together at Dingwalls until the 'last dance' on 3 March 1991.

Gilles then moved over to Kiss himself, having been fired by Jazz FM for making anti-war comments during the first Gulf War. His shows on Kiss were legendary, playing acts as diverse as Josh Wink, Gang Starr and Horace Silver in the space of a single programme. He was then hired by BBC Radio 1 in 1998 and still takes great pride in the show's concept of 'joining the dots' between different styles of music.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Gilles Peterson" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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