Every artist remembers their first time stepping out on stage, but not everyone can say they played Bristol's Lakota nightclub at 15 years old. Pete Cunningham, who leads Bristol-based Ishmael Ensemble as its producer and saxophonist, started the collective as an experimental bedroom project, which now has a quarter of a million monthly listeners on Spotify. He recalled his first taste for stardom at the then Colston Hall, now Bristol Beacon, in the mid-2000s.
"I remember seeing all the backstage area and guts of the building and thinking this is an environment I could get used to," Pete began. "I also remember DJing at Lakota when I was 15, it was the first time I’d been in a real nightclub and immediately fell in love with the rush of playing records through a massive stack of speakers."
Bristol has a strong Soundsystem culture stretching back decades. It was born out of the city's underground Dub and Roots scene popularised by St Pauls Carnival, one of the places where Pete fell in love with music after visiting the festival when he was a teenager.
