Podcast spotlight: Gilles Peterson

Gilles Peterson is a crate-digger extraordinaire from London who drops jazzy beats from the studios of the BBC and in clubs all over the place. Recently, he's curated remixes from the Fania Records catalog, THE salsa sound from New York City in the 1970s. I'll be playing some of that on today's show.

Gilles also hosts a pretty regular podcast. He interviews musicians and producers, most of them inside the cutting-edge beat-creating industry he's a part of. It's a great listen to eavesdrop into a conversation between two artists discussing their craft. And Gilles is careful to play a heavy dose of the music, too. Occasionally the talk can drone on a bit, but you can always fast-forward through it to the music.

The latest to make its way to my iPod (sidenote: this is the cool thing about podcasts. Once you subscribe, little audio gifts make their way directly to your computer, regularly, without you having to do much more than open up your podcasting app, like iTunes) is an interview with Soundway Records owner, Miles Cleret. He combs the four corners of the world for undiscovered artists, from Nigeria to Colombia to Panama. The music and conversation on this podcast were truly a treat...Cleret played some cuts he has yet to release, including one from a band called Keyboard, a soul-funk joint from Lagos, Nigeria, which I'll play on the show today.

If you want to learn how to podcast, check out NCPR's podcasting primer.