Resources on Early Recordings
of the Music of the World.

A collection of articles and other information on the early documentation of music of the world.

Taking into account both commercial and non-commercial recordings, and with an aim at functioning as a source of information describing also the early Grammophone recording business, especially the 78 rpm recordings with discographies and selections of bibliographies of related works. 

This collection of web-pages is intended to provide information on music registered on various types of audiogrammes. In the early stage of making this information available to a broader audience. I will concentrate on converting odds and ends of information especially on the "non-western" music that I have gathered over the years.

The first installments of pages will concentrate on what I refer to as 'backtracking'. I often start out from CD's or LP's of reissued material, as this is more easily available to a wider audience. I have tried taking inventory of some genres that are particularily close to my own interest and enjoyment of music and I have compiled some discographies starting out from what is reissued on CD's, LP's and K7's. I have also scanned and edited some articles that I have enjoyed reading and found informative on related topics. It is my hope that gathering this information here will provide some aid for people looking for a special kind of music, but that it also shall be of some use to the specialist. I am of course aware of the immense territory that I am trying to cover and also that a large part of it has no really good map follow, certainly there will be many flagrant misstakes and obvious gaps in the beginning, but I hope that I will be able to build something more complete and useful with the cooperation of all specialist and afficcionados that I feel are bound to come to my help.

I would like to concentrate on discografical information especially but to put some more meat on the bones I intend to include various related information in the form of articles and pictures. The first collection of articles will hopefully shed some light on the early attempts to record especially the non-european music by the commercial recording industry.

Later it is my intention to also include biographical and bibliographical information on some artists and musical genres. As if this was not enough it is my hope also to be able go into more detail of some aspects of certain musical styles.

It is my sincere hope that readers of these pages will find it worthwhile to supply additional information and point out errors, as the pages will be added to continiously it is also my intention and aim to merge any pertinent information that is supplied by the browsing community.

The first set of articles here are almost all written by either Mr. Paul Vernon or Mr. Fredreric Lagrange and are available here in full text with original illustrations, some are already included here now and the rest will be added and linked as I get the scanned texts html-coded and presentable. Neither Paul nor Frederic has yet any access to internet but they are both most interested in this project. They were the first authors I approached and they where immediately positive and agreed to make regular contributions to this modest attempt at creating a repository of information on early recordings of music available on the Web. Please send me any bibliographical information on related books and articles! If I cannot get the permission from the authors or publishers to put them here in fulltext digital versions I can at least include them in the online bibliography. Lars Fredriksson -970418


Articles in full text that will be available here:

Articles by Paul Vernon:

The Engineers [Missing pictures]
- Early Gramophone Company recordings abroad
- Ethnic Recording Field Trips Vintage Jazz Mart No. 94, 1994
Special Agents
- The role of local agents in early recording Vintage Jazz Mart No. 96 , 1994.

The Odeon Story Musical Traditions No. 14
[not yet prepared]

Chasing the Fado FolkRoots No.105
The World at 80rpm FolkRoots No.119
Savannaphone FolkRoots No.122
On All Cylinders FolkRoots No.125 [missing picture]
A Quick Cantor The Early Days of Recording Jewish Music FolkRoots No.127-128
Sans Border Radio FolkRoots No.130
Ancient Greeks FolkRoots No.133
The Tango Trip FolkRoots No.139
Cairo Practice FolkRoots No.141
Feast of East FolkRoots No.145.
Kronjong Silver FolkRoots No.148
Paris Passion FolkRoots No.151-152 (not yet prepared)
Sambaphones FolkRoots No.153
Arte Regional FolkRoots No.157 [missing background]
Island-O-Phone - Trinidadian & Jamaican music - FolkRoots No. 161
Empire State - the Otoman Empire
- article on the turkish scene - FolkRoots No. 167

Articles with in front of them are either not made available yet or if the link is functional they may not be finally formatted and are likely to get a facelift in the days to follow.I have also corrected some obvious misstakes without any special indication, but any text in the articles that appear in red indicates that I have some doubt as to the correctness of that passage, and pink are amendations by me, the addenda almost exclusively appears at the end of the articles, in the section of suggested further readings or listening recommendations.



Other resources on music that will be maintained here:


Resources on African Music (a)

(to begin with concentrating on Zaïrean music)

Resources on Arabic Music (a)

Resources on Chinese Music (a)


Jewish Cantors and Jewish popular music on 78 rpm


Bibliographies & other Resources that will be maintained here:

On Chinese Music (both popular and traditional)

On Arabic Music (to begin with concentrating on Arabo-Andalucian music)

On African Music (to begin with concentrating on Zaïrean music)

On certain artists (to begin with concentrating on Umm Kulthum, Franco, Yan Jupeng, etc.)




Publishers and Dealers relevant to:

African Music
Arabic Music


The texts by Frederic Lagrange are all taken from the english translations in the leaflets included in the CD-reissues by Club du Disque Arabe (Association Artistes Arab). (These are under preparation LF/97 04 17)

L'Age D'Or de la Musique Egyptienne (Instrumental) AAA-024 (in preparation)

Cafés chantants du Caire - Vol 1 AAA-099

Cafés chantants du Caire - Vol 2 AAA-0?? (in preparation)

Abd al-Hayy Hilmi AAA-075

Sahyk Abu al-Ilâ Mohammad AAA-114

Salama Higazi AAA-085

Shayk Yusuf al Manyalawi AAA-065 (in preparation)

Shaykh Sayyid Darwîsh AAA-096 (in preparation)

 

Some other articles that I hope to add later are:

Several articles by the finnish musicologist Pekka Gronow
Several articles by the french musicologist Frederic Lagrange
etc. etc.

an article on 'The Great Cantors'
Old Vienna
Viennese Whirl [Hunt] 134/4

If you have any relevant material that you feel has its place here please send it to me and I will try to include it. I can OCR material if I find them worthwhile additions to these pages

Material on Zaïrean artists including Franco Luambo Makiadi with a large discographie.



 Please send any comments or additional info to e-mail: info@bolingo.org


PS. Most of the articles by Paul Vernon was originally published in the magazine, and I thank both Paul Vernon and Ian Anderson, the editor of FolkRoots, for their kind permission to let me include that material here.

I am also indebted to monseiuers Fredéric Lagrange and Amin Hacheleff for their kind permission to let me include texts from the publications of Club Du Disque Arabe.:-)