Gilles Peterson is a broadcaster, DJ and record collector who hosts a weekly Saturday afternoon show on BBC Radio 6 Music that’s one of the broadcaster’s most popular music shows, helms independent record label Brownswood Recordings, and is the founder of online radio station Worldwide FM. Gilles also hosts the Worldwide FM radio station on the GTA V computer game.
Throughout his career, Peterson has promoted the new frontiers of jazz, hip-hop, and electronic music. Starting by installing illicit transmitters and hosting shows for pirate radio station Radio Invicta, he later joined the newly-founded Jazz FM and, after that, joined the pirate-turned-legal station Kiss FM. In 1998, he was hired by BBC Radio 1, where he hosted a weekly show until his move to his current slot on BBC Radio 6 Music.
He has been behind several game-changing record labels. Firstly, he founded Acid Jazz in the late eighties, and in the early nineties he started Talkin’ Loud where five of the albums on the label were nominated for a Mercury Music Prize. His current venture is Brownswood Recordings and as a curator and collector, he’s compiled over 100 albums.
In 2011, he founded the Steve Reid Foundation in memory of the legendary jazz drummer. The charity supports musicians who are ill and facing financial difficulties and, jointly with the PRS Foundation, runs the Steve Reid InNOVAtion Award, which has supported upcoming artists such as Moses Boyd, Nubya Garcia and Sarathy Korwar.
Since 2005, he has hosted the annual Worldwide Awards in London and Worldwide Festival in Sète, France, and in 2019, he launched the new We Out Here festival in the UK. In early 2021, Gilles released the Str4ta album (with Bluey from Incognito) and his first full length book ‘Lockdown FM – Broadcasting In A Pandemic’.
