University of Pretoria provides funding as a partner of The Conversation AFRICA.
Some record labels create huge market and financial clout. Some stay much smaller, but punch way above their weight in terms of their impact on the spirit of a country's music. For South Africa, one such label is As-Shams/The Sun, whose founder, Rashid Vally, passed away on 7 December aged 85.
In the era of intensely repressive white minority rule, Vally became the first South African of colour to establish his own independent record label. His releases gave a platform to musically experimental and often politically outspoken artists, including pianist Abdullah Ibrahim. Their work implicitly and explicitly challenged the regime's cultural segregation and its dismissal of Black culture as simplistic and unchanging.
"It all started in my father's shop. It was a grocery, but there was a small shelf of records where he sold Indian music. At that time I was listening to (US jazz artists) Louis Armstrong, Louis Jordan, that sort of music. I would bring the records to the shop to play them for my own pleasure, but people would come in and want to buy them. So I started selling some so as to be able to buy new ones. By the time I left school, in 1956-7, I suppose you could say I had started in the record business,"
Vally said he sustained his project from just a corner shelf in his father's store right up until his death.
Who was Rashid Vally?
Born in Johannesburg in 1939, Vally was a child of South Africa's Indian-heritage Muslim community. His father owned a modest downtown general trading store, Koh-i-Noor; the schoolboy Vally sometimes waited tables at a neighbouring restaurant and was captivated by the music on their jukebox.
Three or four years later after starting out with records from his father's shop shelves, Vally hired recording facilities for langarm discs - dance-band music popular with mixed-heritage communities classified "coloured" under apartheid law.
A global hit
Cape Town-born pianist Dollar Brand (later Abdullah Ibrahim), working then in New York got word about As-Shams/The Sun label which excited him enough upon returning home briefly during '74 sessioning together alongside saxophonist Basil Coetzee producing what became Mannenberg: it's jangling retro piano line fused into bump jive groove making it an instant massive national hit selling over fifty thousand copies!
"Apparently they marched straight out... came directly towards us,"-Valli recalled about The Beaters' experience being turned down by major labels only finding solace within welcoming arms offered through opportunities presented via As Shams instead!
Rebel Music & Breaking Boundaries
- The radical pan-Africanist pop sounds emanating off Harari/The Beaters;
- The avant-garde explorations led Batsumi band members;
- The rebellious tunes channeled forth Movement In City ensemble collaborations featuring international acts like Kippie Moeketsi/Hal Singer Blues Stompin'.
Pops Mohamed noted importance breaking racial classifications when collaborating across diverse genres generations alike stating:"not staying inside [racial] classification". This ethos extended beyond just musical boundaries encompassing visual artistry too commissioning daring young Black talents like Hargreaves Ntukwana designing album covers boldly challenging apartheid norms rigidly enforced back then!.