Filed under: Malaysia
Instrumentalia was not just limited to Indonesia, but can also be found in neighboring Malaysia – although with notably different results. The best example of this – at least in my opinion – is Band De-Fictions.
The band were from Muar, Malaysia – about halfway up the Malay Peninsula between Kula Lumpur and Singapore on the Straight of Malacca. They got their start as the backing the singer A. Halim as part of the Pop Yeh-yeh movement of the early 1960s. The band released a handful of singles, as well as a few albums before going out on their own. As far as I know, they only recorded two albums, both for the Tatex company – that also released The Brothers Hawk album Let’s Do The Funky.
According to the Google translator, the members of the band were S. Dina on lead guitar, Zaideen on rhythm guitar, Idris Talib on organ, Wahid H. on drums, Kassim on percussion and A. Murad on “guitarist behavior”? Not quite sure what that is. Air guitar? But if I had to guess, I’m thinking that A. Murad must have played bass guitar.
If you have any further information, please contact me or leave a comment.
Catalog number TLP-1010 on Tatex Records of Singapore. No release date listed.
Filed under: Lebanon
This week… I got nothing.
O.K., that’s not entirely true. I can tell you that Taroub (or as seen here, Tarup), along with her sister Mayada, were from Lebanon and were of Turkish descent. They had recording careers both in Lebanon and Turkey, where this single is from.
But beyond than, I can not tell you anymore.
Writer’s block? Perhaps.
I looked up writer’s block, and one of the major causes is “A project may be fundamentally misconceived, or beyond the author’s experience or ability”… This may be true. Guess we’ll find out.
If you have any further information, please contact me or leave a comment.
Catalog number MT-574 on Moda Plāk of Turkey. No other information is available.
◄●►◄●►◄●►◄●►◄●►◄●►◄●►◄●►◄●►◄●►◄●►
I received some more information from our friend Hany Zaki. Here’s what he had to say:
Her real name is Amal Jarkas from Turkish roots, as you mentioned. From time to time she used to go to Turkey for making records, or films, or to fall in love. In 1968 [could be the time around when she made that single] she was in Istanbul taking a part in Lebanese -Turkish production film titled Gang of Women with Sabah as the film star and a Turkish actor. His name is Jonette Arkan. He is pretty much looking like Alan Delon [likely that’s what drove him to acting]. The film ended with Arkan and Taroub romancing reached the limit of marriage concept, but eventually it appears to be it was crush.
Thanks Hany!
Filed under: Côte d'Ivoire
♬ My Love
Côte d’Ivoire gained it’s independence from France in 1960. With the highest production of cocoa and third highest coffee production in the world, and becoming the lead exporter of pineapples and palm oil, Côte d’Ivoire was the most prosperous of the French West Africa territories. But while in other countries in Africa, Europeans were driven out following independence – in Côte d’Ivoire, they poured in. The French community grew from only 30,000 prior to independence to 60,000 in 1980, most of them teachers, managers and advisors. For 20 years, the economy maintained an annual growth rate of nearly 10% – the highest of Africa’s non-oil-exporting countries.
While Ernesto Djédjé is considered the father of Ivoirian popular music, there are many other artists who have had success both at home and abroad – Amédée Pierre, Eba Aka Jerome, Guéhi Jean, Paco Sery and Zakri Noël – to name a few. One of the defining traits of Ivoirian popular music is the use of the folk rhythms of the Bété people, which has been prevalent since Côte d’Ivoire’s independence. Also, Djédjé has long been a vocal advocate of Ivoirian music, rallying against the “Congolization” of the Abidjan scene.
The only information that I have been able to find about Audio Rama Orchestre National (also seen as L’Audiorama Orchestra) is that Anon Anon Joseph was the primary songwriter and vocalist. According to what he says in the song, he was “born In the United States of America” and apparently started college when he was twelve years old… Currently, he sits on the Bureau Ivoirien Du Droit D’Auteur, along with Amédée Pierre and Zakri Noël. I’ve only seen one album by them, titled Extraordinaire Surprise Partie on the label Safie Deen, and at least one other single. The label that released this single – Djima Iyanda – was the name of the Yoruba producer who was based in Abidjan in the early 70s. If you have any other information, please contact me.
Catalog number DAD 948 on Djima Iyanda of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Manufactured in France. No release date listed.
Filed under: Singapore
This week’s guest post is by the illustrious Dustin Drase. Dustin is the mastermind behind PlusTapes. The label has released a very diverse roster of artists – from the French pop of Anna St. Clair and Peruvian psych of Los Holy’s, to the lo-fi thrash noise of the Chicago Thrash Ensemble and seaworthy folk-rock of Death Ships, as well as legendary Asian garage bands like Dara Puspita and The Travellers. Dustin saved the day by swooping in to fill a last minute cancellation for this month’s guest post. Also, Dustin decided to post the entire album – a first here at Radiodiffusion Internasionaal – and I was in no the mood to argue.
The Brothers Hawk were an Asian, mostly instrumental, band that played and recorded throughout Singapore and Malaysia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Brothers peddled in the popular “Hala Hala” or “A Go Go” styles much like other contemporaries of their time, The Travellers or The Stylers. Like these bands, the Brothers also served as the backing band for popular vocalists, in their case on three records with Wong Shaiu Chuen.
Let’s Do The Funky, on the Tatex Records label was curiously distributed by the similarly named Tatet Records Trading Co. throughout Malaysia, and Victory Records in Singapore. As is the case with many 60s and 70s records from Singapore, the covers are more exciting than the actual music. There are a number of sites around the net that post covers of records from the 60s Singapore scene, but David Greenfield’s ever growing collection is perhaps the most impressive.
The Hala Hala / A Go Go style (sometimes also referred to as Off Beat Cha Cha) takes traditional Chinese surf-style twang and mixes elements of Rumba, Foxtrot, and Quick Step rhythms. The music was made to be fairly breezy “Teen Dance Music”, and is nowhere near as heavy on the funk or psychedelic as Indonesian and other Malaysian music of its time.
I first came to the music of Singapore through the Girls in the Garage: Oriental Special compilation, which shows an admittedly slanted view of the Singapore music scene. Whereas much of the music on that compilation was meant to show Westerners the silly, broken-English side of Singapore, the Brothers Hawk seem to sidestep that pitfall and actually can sing in English as evidenced by the cowboy ballad “One Way Wind”, and the ultra groovy “Co-Co”.
Many of the Singapore bands had recurring night club gigs and were tied to one specific recording studio. They would churn out a multitude of hits and cover songs, which were sometimes released repeatedly on differently packaged albums (see discography below for a good example of this). Let’s Do The Funky is labeled as The Sound of the Brothers Hawk Vol. 2, which leads one to believe there is a Vol. 1 out there somewhere, but I have yet to see evidence of this record existing.
Track Listing
1. Flying Machine
2. Bombay Duck
3. One Way Wind
4. My Lady
5. Co-Co
6. Funny, Funny
7. Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum
8. Where Are You? The Jilted
9. Forgive Me, Darling
10. Wonderful Life
11. To the Frontier
12. Only You
13. Nothing in My Life
14. The Fated Dream
Discography
*special thanks to the ongoing discography project by the folks from Scarce Sounds – reprinted by permission
TATEX (Singapore)
TATEX (Singapore)
TLP-1011 • The Brothers Hawk • Let’s Do the Funky – The Sound of The Brothers Hawk Vol. 2
PEAK RECORDS (Singapore/Malaysia)
BCLP-8004 • The Brothers Hawk • Popular Hits Party ‘70
WHITE RABBIT RECORD (Singapore)
HE-1975 • Wong Shiau Chuen + The Brothers Hawk
HAPPY RECORD COMPANY (H.R.C.) (Malaysia) – “Happy Record Electronic Enterprise Sdn. Bhd., Malaysia”
HE-1975 • Wong Shaiu Chuen + The Brothers Hawk
HE-1976 • Wong Shaiu Chuen + The Brothers Hawk
HE-1978 • Wong Shiau Chuen + The Brothers Hawk
PEAK RECORD (Singapore)
BC-7097 • Lin Zhen + The Brothers Hawk
ORIENTAL RECORD (Singapore) – “Oriental Record Co., Singapore”
ORC-9901 • Jia Jia + The Brothers Hawk
Catalog number TLP-1011on Tatex Records of Singapore. No release date listed.
Filed under: Iran
♬ Shirley
The British Invasion was the term applied by the news media – and subsequently by consumers – to the influx of rock and roll, beat and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular in not only in the United States, but in Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well. But the music was popular all over the world, and influenced musicians everywhere.
One of the more interesting places that these influences turned up, at least in my opinion, was Iran. Iran’s openness to The West in the 60s and 70 was due most in part to the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – that is until the Islamic Revolution of 1979. But up until that time, there was a scene in Tehran with a handful of bands and small record labels – that not only released local music but music from America and Europe as well.
Although I have seen the name of this band transliterated as Ojubeha, Ojoobe-Ha, Aajubehaa Ajoobehaa and Ajubehaa, the most common version seems to be Ojoobeha. But the name translates from Farsi into English as The Remarkables. To the best of my knowledge, they only recorded two singles, both for the Ahang e Rooz label. Their lead singer was Jamshid Alimorad, who went on to become an actor and have a solo career. He currently resides in New York City and still performs live around the U. S. His most recent album Jashn Maa (Celebration) was released in 2007.
Ojoobeha, as well as Flowers, Golden Ring, Googoosh, Kurush, Littles, Maha Jamin, The Rebels, Shabah and a number of others are featured on the recently released compilation Raks! Raks! Raks! on Discos Raks – the same people who produced the Waking Up Scheherazade compilation.
Catalog number ۲۰۹۵۱ on Iran Gram Co. of Tehran, Iran. No release date listed. This single was also released by the Ahang e Rooz label in 1971. Which pressing was released first is unknown.
Filed under: Ethiopia
I would guess that for many folks, their first introduction to the hypnotic sounds of Ethiopian Jazz would have been the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers. The soundtrack was heavy with instrumental songs of Mulatu Astatqé. I will admit, at the time I was only starting to delve into the music of Ethiopia when a friend lent me a copy of Ethiopiques Volume 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale 1969-1974. But soon after, I started checking out as many of the series as the Washington State Library system could lend me. Eventually, I came across Ethiopiques Volume 13: Ethiopian Groove and was blown away by The Walias Band’s instrumental Muziqawi Silt.
From the Ethiopiques website:
The Walias Band • Active from the early 1970s, until the beginning of the 1990s, The Walias Band was a seminal band on the Ethiopian scene. Made up of musicians from the Venus Band (so called because they were employed by the Venus Club) and later Shèbèlé’s Band (from the Wabi Shèbèlé Hôtel) it was one of the first independent groups able to impose their own name upon the venues that hired them. Its longest lasting members were the saxophonist Mogès Habté, bass-player Mèlakè Gèbrè, drummer Tèmarè Harègou and trumpeter Yohannes Tèkola. Girma Bèyènè was also an active member of Walias.
In 1981 The Walias Band was the first modern Ethiopian group to tour the community of Ethiopian exiles in the USA. Deciding not to return to Mengistu’s dreadful ‘paradise’, Girma Bèyènè, Mogès Habté, Mèlakè Gèbrè and Haylu Mergia chose to remain in exile on the East Coast. There, Mogès released a CD accompanied by a booklet rich in biographical and historical information. In it he credits his major influences: King Curtis, Junior Walker and Maceo Parker. For a further ten years Yohannes Tèkola and Tèmarè Harègou continued to play, making the Walias Band, together with the Roha Band and Ethio Star, one of the best modern groups during the sombre ‘Derg’ period.
As for Alemayehu Borobor, I know that he recorded as a backing vocalist with The Ibex Band, and is on the song Belaya Belaya which appears on Ethiopiques Volume 19: Altèmeyé with Mahmoud Ahmed. He also preformed along with Yohannes Afewerq, Mammo Demissie and Kebbede Welde-Maryam on the track Goraw on the Orchestra Ethiopia compilation, Ethiopiques Volume 23.
Catalog number fx7643 / fx7644 on Kaifa Records of Ethiopia. No release date listed.
Filed under: Laos
♬ 
Laos is the forgotten land. Compared to their neighbors – Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, even Burma – no one really ever mentions Laos.
The Land of a Million Elephants was a French protectorate up until it gained independence in 1949. But only four years later, the country fell into a brutal civil war. During this time, both South Vietnamese and the North Vietnamese Army as well as American and Thai forces became embroiled for two decades. In 1973, the US pulled out of Laos and less than two years later the Pathet Lao overthrew the royalist government and established the Lao People’s Democratic Republic – only a few months after the Fall of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese and Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge.
But through all of this unrest, there was music. There is always music. How else would people survive while their country was ripped apart from all sides? Even though all the upheaval, the records – rare as they are – still exist. But for all of what you can find about the history of Pop music in Cambodia – even after the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, there is next to nothing about Laos – outside of the realm of traditional folk and opera. And much of it has been forgotten.
Laos shares much of its musical heritage with Thailand. Molam (or Mor lam), Lam luang and Lam ploen – which was influenced by Luk thung – can be found in both countries, especially the Isan region. And the most distinctive musical instrument, other than the ching (finger cymbals), is the bamboo mouth organ called a khene. According to legend, the instrument was invented by a woman trying to imitate the calls of a bird called the garawek.
Kuntung Lathparkdy was born in Vientiane, Laos – but most people know him as K. Viseth (ก.วิเสส). He got his start in music during the early 1970s where he was the lead singer of a school band, which was sponsored by Kong Lae, a former Lao Royal Army General and ex-Pathat Lao army officer. After that, he moved on to the Lao army band, ราบอากาศวังเวียง (Rap Akat Wang Wiang), and then later joined the band of Thai luk thung star กังวาลไพร ลูกเพชร (Kangwanphrai Lukphet).
Besides being a musician, he also acted in film and on television. His first movie was titled Ruk Ther Smer (Love You Eternally), and his second was Namperng Prachan (Sweat & Beautiful), both of which were made in Thailand. His most well known film was Tai Dum Lum Pan is the title of a Lao movie that co-produced between Lao and Thai companies. This song, which was his biggest hit, is from that film.
The song is sung in Thai, however alot of these words are from the Isan dialect (basically Lao). It’s about the ethnic group the Tai Dam, and was under suspicion in Thailand for having lyrical content of a potentially Communist nature. In the song, a traveling Lao man. He has been away for 15 years, reminiscing about his home. He speaks to other travelers and emigrants that he meets along his journey, and asks them to recall their home and where they have came from. He sings about Lao unity – which at that time, was something the country was missing.
Here are some of the lyrics (in Thai script and transliterated):
สิบห้าปี ที่ไตเฮา ห่างแดนดิน (เดินกันไป) จงเอ็นดู กุ่งข้าน้อย ที่พลอยพลัดบ้าน
sip ha pi thi tai hao hang daen din (doen kan pai) chong endu kung kha noi thi phloi phlat ban
เฮาคนไทย ย้ายกันไป ทุกถิ่นทุกฐาน จงฮักกันเด้อ ไตดำเฮานา
hao khon thai yai kan pai thuk thin thuk than chong hak kan doe tai dam hao na
สิบห้าปี ที่ไตดำเฮา เสียดายเด (เดินเข้าไป) เมืองเฮาเพ แสนเสียดาย สูเจ้าเพิ่นหล้า
sip ha pi thi tai dam hao sia dai de (doen khao pai) mueang hao phe saen sia dai suchao phoen la
เฮือนเคยอยู่ อู่เคยนอน ต้องจรจำลา ปะให้ปาหนา น้ำตาไตไหล
huean khoei yu u khoei non tong chon cham la pa hai pa na nam ta tai lai
สิบห้าปี ที่ไตเฮา เสียแดนเมือง (เดินกันไป) เคยฮุ่งเฮือง กุ่งข้าน้อย อยู่สุขสบาย
sip ha pi thi tai hao sia daen mueang (doen kan pai) khoei hung hueang kung kha noi yu suk sabai
ลุงแก่งตา ได้สางสา บ้านเมืองไว้ให้ บัดนี้จากไกล ไตเสียดายเด
lung kaeng ta dai sang sa ban mueang wai hai bat ni chak klai tai sia dai de
K. Viseth recorded much of his songs in Thai, and they were released on a Thai record label. Many of his songs were recorded by other artists in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand. He now he resides In Arizona, in the U.S. where he still records and releases his own music.
Thanks to Joi Po Dee, Salina Keomanyvong and Erik Gergis for their help and translation. Special thanks to Peter Doolan for all of the information, links and lyrics.
Catalog number… Well, there isn’t one. Released by Wong Dohndri Ga Vang Vieng (Wong Music Company from Vang Vieng). There is a matrix number engraved in the vinyl: EP – 1001 / Y.M.S. 70070 x 7. No other information available.
Filed under: Egypt
♬ Abdel Monim Madboly / طيب يا صبر طيب • Tayeb Ya Sabr Tayeb /عبد المنعم مدبولي
♬ Mounir Mourad / موسيقى المصنع • The Factory Theme / منير مراد
The guest post for this week is by Hany Zaki – my man in Cairo. I am not quite sure how I originally got in touch with Hany. I think it may have been that Baligh Hamdi single. But once I mentioned Omar Khorshid, we hit it off and have been in contact ever since. Besides being an encyclopedia of Egyptian music, he runs a website dedicated to Omar Khorshid.
The simple concept of friends stealing for an evil boss who meet someone who wants to straighten them out and make a musical show about their lives. This was the basic idea of the last quality musical of the 70s titled Mold Ya Donia (What A Bewildered World) that was a box office smash in 1976.
The film, which stared the singer Afaf Rady, was highly produced by Baligh Hamdy, who had a number of hit singles a few years earlier. They were joined by a comic actor, Abdel Monim Madboly, who ironically performs a melancholic song moaning and crying about the good old times of being a carriage driver. The title name is Tayeb Ya Sabr Tayeb, and he appears in his stable drunk and whipping all over the place while he sadly sings… Surprisingly, it was a big hit for a soundtrack and deserved a single release and was filmed for TV later.
On the other side two themes appear, titled The Factory Theme and Train Whistle Theme, adding cheerful unmistaken 70s beat of organ and percussion. Both were composed by Mounir Mourad, who was a pretty underrated multi-talented artist coming from a Jewish background with an artistic family of singers. Mounir Mourad was also a singer, as well as an actor and director but was most famous as a composer who made a new happy sound to the Middle Eastern ears thanks to his talents plus his wide knowledge of international music. He composed to almost every singer from the 50s till he died in 1980.
Catalog number XSP 460 / 31-76009 – 45 S 230 on Soutelfan of Cairo, Egypt. Released 1976.
Filed under: Dahomey
♬ Winoukin
In Benin, records must grow on trees. For such a small country, there seems to be hundreds of records from there – and most of them are really good. There were loads of small labels both in Benin and in neighboring Nigeria. And in 1973, the Societé Africaine de Techniques Electroniques – or SATEL – pressing plant opened it’s doors on the highway between Cotonou and Porto Novo, which became one of the most popular pressing plans in all of Western Africa.
One of those labels was Albarika Store, which was also then name of a chain of record stores, was ran by Seidou Adissa. Samy Ben Redjeb interviewed Celestin Houenou Seza, who was Adissa’s right hand man, for the liner notes of the African Scream Contest compilation on Analog Africa.
I was giving lessons to Adissa’s children during holidays and I guess I made a good impression on him because as soon as I finished school in 1969 he asked me to help him to manage his new project. He loved traditional music from his tribe, the Yoruba and he wanted to produce a few artists and see if he could make a business out of it. The first artist recorded was Yedenou Adjahaoi, who was the most popular traditional artist in the region. His first single was recorded in Nigeria and distributed by Badejo in 1968. That record was a hit. As a consequence Adissa came to see me and offered me a chance to join his music company. I had just finished school and was a seventeen-year-old boy full of ambition and he was a great businessman who couldn’t read or write. He showed me the whole procedure – from the recording to the pressing plants via the distribution network, and by the time we did our first modern recording. which was by Gnonnas Pedro, I knew how to run the whole label by myself.
In 1969 the students from the University of Porto Novo were going crazy for a track from Ghana called Sock It to Me (by The Super Eagles) and they were bombarding us with requests. We never experienced that kind of reaction so we were wondering what kind of song could that be? So I traveled to Accra to buy a small stock of that record which we would resell in Dahomey. I purchased about a hundred 45s, and in two days they were all gone. We didn’t want to go back to Accra to get some more. Instead, we thought of recording our own version for the Benin market. El Rego had a guy called Eddy Black Power who could do that kind of stuff, so we approached him. We left for Lagos with El Rego et Ses Commandos where they recorded four songs We sold three thousand copies of the title Feeling You Got (the cover version of Sock It To Me) which was a huge success at the time, so we decided to look for the band members of the Super Eagles to buy a license. Despite many trips to Ghana we never managed to find them Then, one day we found out they were actually from Gambia!
A few months later we signed Orchestre Poly-Rythmo. Adissa wanted the song Angelina, so we traveled to Lagos for a recording; that was in early 1970. Adissa hadn’t even noticed the other songs we recorded that day, but I felt something would happen with the track Gbeti Madjro. Man, it spread like wildfire. We sold a lot – not sure how many, but a lot. I believe that song revolutionized the music industry in this country.
At that time we had decided not just to focus on bands from Porto Novo, or Cotonou, but also to travel all over the country to locate and record the best bands. I was in charge of those kinds of operations – I was actually in charge of everything, but that’s the part I am most proud of. I would travel to every corner of Benin looking for groups. In Parakou, which is located in the northeast of the country we bumped into an excellent band led by Alidou Boukari called Anassoua Jazz, Their first recording with us was a Jerk called Fatouma Na Alidou recorded in 1971. We had huge success in the Borgou state with that one, which encouraged other bands from the region to seek our production.
One day I found (Moussa) Mama Franco in front of my door. He explained that he had a group called Super Borgou de Parakou, and that he wanted us to record them, Moussa seemed to be a serious guy with a positive attitude, so I traveled back with him, and found out that the band was having enormous success with its live performances. They had an incredible drum’ mar I forgot his name, and their lead singer had a golden voice; we used to call him “Saka”. It was with Super Borgou that we made our first extended play 7” inch record. Some of the bands we recorded over the years were rebels and I spent a lot of time checking the lyrics and censoring offensive words I had to make sure the songs could be played on the radio. When El Rego covered Sock It to Me, I changed the tide to Feeling You Got. Some of the groups we produced simply didn’t want us to touch to any of their lyrics, so we would just drop the title and get on with our business. But to release a song with naughty lyrics would have given us bad press, and my job as to make sure that didn’t happen.
This interview is just about the only mention of Orchestre Anassoa Jazz de Parakou. The only other information that I have been able to find is that the main person behind the band was Alidou Boukari – who would later go on to form Orchestre Anos Band. Also, Orchestre Anassoa Jazz de Parakou released at least two other singles, both on the Albarika Store label.
Catalog number ASB29 on Albarika Store of Lagos, Nigeria. No release date listed.
Filed under: India
Information. Much like history, it depends on who you ask. And everyone has different story. You know the saying, “written in stone”? Well, it’s not a solid thing. It’s very fluid. You pick up little bits here and there, learning as you go. And just when you think you’ve got it, something will come along and change what you think you know.
It goes completely against the obsessive compulsive nature of the record collector. There’s supposed to be a list. You get all the records on the list, and then you’re done. Mission accomplished. But when it comes to records from far flung corners of the world, it’s not that simple.
I thought I had all of the information I needed when I wrote the liner notes for the Bollywood Steel Guitar disc for Sublime Frequencies. I was positive that I had found every steel guitar player in India and had included them in the compilation. I was wrong.
Even though I asked everyone I could find about the players and their records, I still did not have all of the pieces of the puzzle. Since then, I have discovered a whole slew of other players – some only recorded Classical Tagore songs, but others recorded Filmi songs as well – dating back to the 40s all of the way up to the present. Besides Kazi Aniruddha, Kazi Arindam, Gautam Dasgupta, Sunil Ganguly, S. Hazarasingh, Charanjit Singh and Van Shipley – who were included on the Bollywood Steel Guitar disc – there was Mohon Bhattacharya, Himanshu Biswas, Barum Kumar Pal, Batuk Nandy, Ranjit Datta, Sujit Nath, Robin Paul, Dipankar Sen Gupta… And who knows? There could be more.
As I have said before, there is no book you can go look this stuff up in. Well, that may not be true. But if there is one, I’m not the only one looking for it – especially when it comes to records from India. Karl-Michael Schneider maintains a site that is trying to catalog all of the releases that were issued by the The Gramophone Company Ltd. While there were other small labels like Hindusthan and Megaphone up until about the 40s and then Concord, Polydor and Super Cassettes popped up in the 80s, The Gramophone Company of India had a virtual monopoly on recordings in India for almost all of the 1900s. According to the Society of Indian Record Collectors, it has been estimated that during the last century that about half a million different titles were released in India. And since they were pressed in numbers from as few five hundred to a few hundred thousand copies – many of these recordings remain unheard by more than just a few people.
As for Barum Kumar Pal, this seems to be his only release. Of course… I could be wrong.
Catalog number 2392 899 on Polydor of India, released 1979.
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