DJ, label boss and all-around musical lightning rod Gilles Peterson is often called a “tastemaker,” and while that description is certainly apt, it only hints at the depth of the French-born Londoner’s connection with music. As a teenager he ran his own pirate radio operation, in the late eighties he founded a pair of hugely influential record labels; he currently helms a third label and two music festivals, and his hosting duties on BBC Radio 6 and his own Worldwide FM are the latest in three-and-a-half decades of high-profile DJ gigs. Gilles is a treasure hunter, eager to share his globe-spanning, jazz- and funk-drenched riches with anyone with an open mind. Few people have done as much to shape our musical tastes.

Peterson came of musical age in the golden era of the mid- and late-70s, when disco and punk were shaking things up, and soulful sounds like Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do for Love” or Earth, Wind & Fire’s “I Am” were catching his ear. He began exploring the worlds of jazz, funk and soul, stepping into the small London clubs – most were really pubs or bar back rooms – where these sounds were being played.

“Those clubs were brilliant,” he beams. “And the crowd would be diverse as well, a mixture of all cultures. That was the great thing about that music — it was the most multiracial thing that existed. And for me as a boy living in the suburbs it was all so exciting. We were 14 or 15 years old, going to these places and standing in the corner, listening to DJs playing these records imported from America, and we were learning from them.”

His compulsion to share music saw him broadcasting illegally as a pirate DJ. “I wanted to champion music you wouldn’t hear anywhere else. In those years the British musical zeitgeist was very rock & roll. So if you were into soul or jazz-funk, you were already an outsider, because it wasn’t the mainstream. You felt you were part of a secret society.”

Few in the music business can claim to have codified a new genre, but Peterson managed just that when he and fellow DJ Chris Bangs came up with the term “acid jazz” – a jokey play on “acid house” – as a way to break free of the more traditional jazz network. “Acid jazz was a box for us to throw in all our mad eclectic ideas of what jazz could be,” he explains. As a record label, Acid Jazz championed this DJ-led approach, and with its follow-up label Talkin’ Loud, played host to the likes of Galliano, Incognito, Young Disciples and Roni Size & Reprazent, among many other notables.

His third and current imprint is Brownswood, and it’s clear that the label is a driving force. “There's a part of me that's very much about signing and developing artists,” he explains. “and as a radio person I feel a responsibility that at least 70 percent of the music I play should be new, because these artists need that.” Whether as label boss or DJ, his excitement comes from seeing artists he’s discovered rise and do well. “Part of my enjoyment is to see groups that I celebrated very early do very well globally. It’s a bit like putting money on a horse.”