Decca West African recordings
Number of items in collection: 984
Short description:
Recordings in this collection can be played by anyone.
The Decca West Africa yellow label series, issued on shellac disc between circa 1948-1958, provides a major resource for the study of contemporary African music. The majority of the recordings emanate from Ghana. The series features some virtual household names, such as highlife stars E.T. Mensah and his Tempos Band, King Bruce or The Black Beats.
Long description:
Recordings in this collection can be played by anyone.
The Decca West Africa yellow label series, issued on shellac disc between circa 1948-1958, provides a major resource for the study of contemporary African music. The majority of the recordings emanate from Ghana. The series features some virtual household names, such as highlife stars E.T. Mensah and King Bruce and The Black Beats. On this occasion we have not been able to include E.T. Mensah recordings for copyright reasons.
A large number of recordings were of Nigerian musicians, including Ojoge Daniel, Theophilus Iwalokun, Adeolu Akinsanya, and other early jùjú pioneers. However, more importantly, the collection includes more obscure artists – many of whom have long since passed away - thus providing a detailed picture of the musical scene in West Africa at the time.
Using the resource:
- Each recording is accompanied by a “related image” providing a scan of the label
- Apart from the browse categories listed, the resource can be searched by publisher’s catalogue number (e.g. Decca WA 1633, or just 1633) as well as by the recording’s matrix number (e.g. KWA 4177, or just 4177) by using the search box and limiting the search to the Decca West Africa recordings.
- Recordings have been attributed country, culture/language and genre classifications where these were easily identifiable from the record label or other sources. This is not a complete categorisation. Browsing by genre, therefore, by far the longest list of recordings appears in the miscellaneous category as the record label did not always enter the relevant information. Some group names have more that one spelling and spellings have been retained as they appear on the record label.
Users may also be interested in the following resources:
- information about recordings from a similar period and from a range of different African countries published by RetroAfric.
- information on other recording activities of the period in Ghana and Nigeria by the Union Trading Company (UTC).
- contextual information on recording activities generally in West Africa in an article by Paul Vernon.
All recordings on this site are governed by licence agreements.