RetroAfric

Established 1986,London, UK The RetroAfric partnership began as much as a rescue mission for some of Africa's finest and long-forgotten music as a business venture. The three partners are Ronnie Graham, Graeme Ewens and Charles Easmon. The three were each writing about African music for a variety of publications and were being stimulated by the surge of new African music. Some vintage material came into their hands which included 1950s songs by ET Mensah and Franco & OK Jazz; arguably the most crucial figures in the history of Highlife and Congo Rumba, respectively. These recordings were recognised as essential items from the formative years of African popular dance music, which had not been heard for 30 years. They believed it would be a valuable contribution to the appreciation of African music to re-issue these classic works. The first ET Mensah compilation, All For You (RETRO1LP) was released on vinyl in 1986 and ET was enticed out of retirement to play a comeback concert in London. This was followed in 1987 by the Franco & OK Jazz release, Originalite(RETRO2LP). Franco was enthusiastic about releasing the original OK Jazz recordings on RetroAfric and entered into the spirit with his subsequent album which began with the cry 'Retro Non-Stop'. These first two vinyl releases have since been remastered and augmented by extra tracks to bring them up to CD length. The second Mensah release, Day by Day (RETRO3CD) was the first CD release on the label and since then all releases have been available in CD format only. RetroAfric often works in collaboration with the National Sound Archive, part of the British Library, London, which makes a copy of all the tracks for their International Music Collection. They cannot market the material but it is available for private listening, and it is catalogued in this definitive archive. The Archive also has several tracks available for private listening which we were unable to fit on to CD releases.