drawing together the confluence

Charlie Gillet has died.

Few people can have opened so many ears to such a variety of music over the last four decades as Charlie Gillett, the author and radio disc jockey, who has died aged 68 after a long illness. Charlie wrote the first serious history of rock'n'roll and went on to become a central figure in drawing together the confluence of international sounds that became known, to the benefit of many artists whose work might otherwise have remained in obscurity, as world music.

Tributes from posters at his Sound of the World forum.



Here he is last year, conducting the members of the Éthiopiques into a tent and speaking to Francis Falceto.