with Jeremy Sylvester

Jamz Supernova rewinds to the 90s as part of The Music is Black, the BBC season marking more than 125 years of Black British music alongside V&A East Museum's exhibition The Music is Black: A British Story.

Her first guest is Jeremy Sylvester, one of the most influential and least heralded figures in British dance music. As in-house producer at Nice 'N' Ripe, he helped build the sound of UK garage house across a blizzard of aliases — Sly, Deep Cover, Groove Connektion, G.O.D. and plenty more — road-testing filthy speed garage basslines and soulful four-to-the-floor rollers on the same afternoon. As Club Asylum he took that sound overground, scoring a chart hit with Freek Me Up and remixing All Saints, Shola Ama, Jodeci and KC & JoJo, while releases followed on Azuli, XL, Defected and Ministry of Sound. Three decades on he is still going, running Urban Dubz Music and his Garage Paradise label and club night, and he joins Jamz to talk through what he calls his rinse-out years: pirate radio, dubplates, the studio tricks behind those basslines, and why the 90s underground still has not been properly credited for what it built.

There is a second 90s trailblazer on the show. Smokin Jo bought her first set of decks in 1990 because there were so few women behind them, and within two years she had residencies at Trade at Turnmills and a place in history as the only woman ever named DJ Mag's DJ of the Year — a record that still stands more than 30 years later. Ministry of Sound, Manumission and Space Ibiza followed, along with a career built on reading a room rather than chasing hype. Jamz plays her set recorded at Power & Respect, the free weekender on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park where Jamz curated the Saturday line-up, celebrating the Black women and non-binary artists driving the music and the culture forward.

Produced by BBC Audio for BBC Radio 6 Music