Gallo Record Company, Africa’s oldest music stable, is commemorating its 95th anniversary with a six-part podcast series, Gallo Vault Sessions, spotlighting the rich history of the label.
Gallo Record Company, Africa’s oldest music stable, is commemorating its 95th anniversary with a six-part podcast series,The first episode launching on Thursday features historian and archivist Rob Allingham, as well as royalty manager Micheal Swarathle. Antos Stella, Ivor Haarburger and Sipho Sithole are other voices featured. They all share their recollections of the stable’s trajectory over the years.
Then there was the enormous blow felt by the industry at large when most artists went into exile right after the Sharpeville massacre and how Gallo completely missed one of Mzansi’s most pivotal musical eras, the era of kwaito music.“Gallo started losing its shine and it’s no secret… I think when the kwaito genre came in, we missed the kwaito bus completely. Because we were just not in touch with what was happening [in the townships], and there’s no one person to blame,” Stella said.
Another intriguing part of history covered is the shift in the total abandonment of the Western harmonisations influenced by the African-American sound that came with Miriam Makeba. This evolution came at the rise of Makeba and the Skylarks’ shine in the 1950s, an all-female group formed at the end of the heavy male dominance in the African urban vocal styles that lasted three decades.
“The start of the early 1950s saw a shift to female groups, edging the male guys out,” Allingham said.
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