Brownswood Recordings

Brownswood Recordings is the London independent label founded by broadcaster, DJ and curator Gilles Peterson in 2006. Its releases reflect Peterson’s wide-ranging musical interests, bringing together modern jazz, soul, club music and globally rooted sounds through artists whose work sits outside easy commercial categories.

The label took its name and inspiration from Peterson’s Brownswood Basement sessions on his BBC Radio 1 Worldwide show. Held roughly every three months, the sessions returned to the records that informed modern jazz-minded dancefloor music, with Peterson playing original vinyl pressings and tracing connections between older recordings and new musicians and producers. Brownswood Recordings became an outlet for artists he felt deserved wider attention, as well as for his own Cuban-inspired Havana Cultura Band and Brazilian-inspired Sonzeira projects.

Its name also follows an earlier Brownswood Records imprint, a Talkin’ Loud subsidiary within Mercury that issued work by Japanese artists during the mid-1990s, particularly United Future Organization. The later Brownswood has built a roster spanning singers, producers, instrumentalists and bands, including José James, Ghostpoet, Ben Westbeech, Mala, Daymé Arocena, Zara McFarlane, Yussef Kamaal, Shabaka and the Ancestors, Skinny Pelembe, KOKOROKO, oreglo, IZCO, Marysia Osu, muva of Earth, Galliano and Lefto.

Brownswood also runs Future Bubblers, a programme connected with emerging UK talent. In a later partnership with Warner Music UK, Brownswood launched a joint venture whose first release was drummer and producer Yussef Dayes’ debut solo album, Black Classical Music.