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 Charlie Gillett Possibly the most engaging show on British radio. (from 'Slice of Life' in Time Out, June 2008). The following is an excerpt from an interview by Ian Anderson for fRoots Magazine Until 1999, as a presenter on the BBC’s local station in London, Charlie Gillett was a world music DJ who had a great reputation whom most of our readers couldn't hear. Then he was given a weekly show on the BBC World Service, where many listen to him worldwide both on radio stations and online. Now he’s part of the World on 3 team at Radio 3. But Charlie's not just the guru of world music radio (and assembler of the state-of-the art world music CD compilation series, World 2000 to 2007). His Sound Of The City was one of the first major books about popular music from the rock 'n' roll era, his compilation Another Saturday Night was a major factor in breaking Cajun music in the UK, and less well publicised is his role as a publisher and record label boss in the music biz mainstream. His entry as a professional was as a journalist and writer. "I had weekly column in Record Mirror from 1968, but everything changed when Sound Of The City came out, first in America in 1970, and then here in1971." Charlie was soon involved in television; a music panel show with Michael Parkinson; a series of artist profiles including B.B. King, the Drifters, Labi Siffre and Gilbert O'Sullivan; presenting an early arts review programme. Then he got a call from Michael Appleton offering him a presenter gig on The Old Grey Whistle Test. "In normal circumstances one would have said yes, but a parallel thing had happened. BBC Radio London had started up, and I’d been offered my own show. I preferred Radio to TV, preferred being in control of the content of my own programme. There have been one or two things that I have said no to, which I've never for a second regretted." Charlie presented the influential Honky Tonk on BBC Radio London from March 1972 until the end of 1978, during which time his support and broadcasting of demos by then-unknowns was most famously responsible for the career breaks of bands like Dire Straits. “But when they asked if I’d like to manage them, I said ‘no thanks’.” After a year off, in 1980 he moved to London commercial station Capital Radio. "A crucial turning point was when Joe Jackson chose to play salsa and King Sunny Ade. In the '50s In 1973 I played Manu Dibango's ‘Soul Makossa’ on the radio five times! It was just one of those records. I didn't know anything about it.. And ‘New York City’ by Tabou Combo - it was about seven minutes long, on a show where everything else tended to be two and a half minutes. But the seeds were really sown by Joe and the guys out of The Beat who, in 1982, said 'We were listening to African music as we were making our records'. I began to join the dots." "In 1983 I suggested to the Head of Music that I could do a show specialising in this kind of music, telling him, 'I don't know about foreign music, but the audience does, so if I jump into the deep end, they will help me out with what I don't know'. So many guests came in, Fela Kuti, Arrow, Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba. I learned so much. But in 1987 a new head of music came to the station and I could feel that he was very uncomfortable with my show. I lasted three more years but decided it was time to go. The last day of 1990 was my last day at Capital." Charlie's '80s residency on Capital's airwaves was a major catalyst and important neighbourhood notice board, without which the whole evolution of world music in the UK would have been very different. Indeed, within months of leaving Capital (the expression 'jumped before he was pushed' may be appropriate), Charlie won the Sony Gold Award for Lifetime Achievement in British Radio. He had in the meantime been running the Oval record label with partner Gordon Nelki, having occasional success with Ian Dury, Lene Lovich and, most remuneratively, Paul Hardcastle, whose ‘19” was a worldwide hit in 1985, published by Oval. In 1998 Oval had a worldwide hit with ‘Would You…? by Touch & Go which has been used in many films, TV programmes and commercials. I wonder if, through his experiences of how the mainstream makes hits, Charlie's approach to his role as world music DJ shows a different perspective to others. Most world music radio presenters are forever struggling to balance the deluge of material with severely restricted hours. There are so many CDs arriving, you perhaps manage to air one track off each and that's it. Charlie, unusually, will take one track off an album and play it six weeks in a row. "Very rarely six weeks in a row. But if there's a track I really, really like, I feel that I haven't represented that by only playing it once. It's partly my obligation to this record for pleasing me so much. And I am definitely also affected by which track people respond to when they email after a show, asking: 'What was that?'" "I continue to get the greatest enjoyment from setting two or three records alongside each other which have no generic relationship yet feel as if they enhance each other - they may come from different times and places but share a sound, an emotion, a detail. While some of these are records I discover as I pick my way amongst the packets that come through the door in a daily avalanche, and others are remembered from records filed away on my shelves, some are introduced by my guests who bring their different points-of-view in the game I call Radio Ping Pong where we take turns to play records for an hour." "I'm also aware that even though this audience has proved to be remarkably open-minded towards the unknown, each of us can only take in so much unfamiliar material before it all begins to blur. So in addition to going back to 'oldies' as a comfortable reference, I also use the repeat plays of newer releases as a moment when people can in effect recover their breath from all the new stuff." "When we first got interested in the '80s, we coincidentally had the benefit of the emergence of Youssou N'Dour and Salif Keita in particular, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. There were a number of very, very charismatic genre leaders who - having in effect been discovered by us, as it were - did actually mean something outside that. Johnny Walker played Salif Keita on Radio 1 at the time. The world music scene is missing a newer generation of such well known figures. For people who are outside the inner circle of world music connoisseurs, there are too many different names. But the Radio 3 awards for World Music have been a big help in resolving this, bringing a few names to the surface each year." "It's a truism of marketing that one thing doesn't have an impact, it's the reinforcement of three or four things. That's why, in big advertising campaigns, you see the ad on TV but it's the still on the poster as you're driving along the road that reinforces, then a magazine picture of the same thing, and gradually you think 'OK, I've got the message'. So our own little version of that is that the same names featured in fRoots are also seen live in clubs and festivals and are heard on the radio. In twenty years, a context for world music has emerged, and it seems to be here to stay ." Adapted from an interview with Ian Anderson Editor: fRoots Magazine |
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