Welcome to African Cassettes

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African Cassettes is an online cassettography dedicated to documenting African music released on cassettes. Currently the project is in an early development stage. A list of all cassettes included until now can be seen here. New cassettes are being added on a daily base. The project is based at and supported by the African Music Archives (AMA) at the University of Mainz.

Introduction

Over a period of more than 40 years cassette albums were the predominant media for publishing popular music in most African countries, i.e. the majority of commercially produced music was released on cassettes. As such music produced and released on cassettes represent an immense treasure of cultural heritage. Despite the relevance and importance of this heritage there is not much knowledge about the number and content of the individual cassette albums. Although there are projects on specific genres or with regional focus by highly engaged and knowledgable enthusiasts there is no compendium or catalogue which contains information on all cassette albums produced in African countries in a standardized way. Given the fact that most music that was produced was published on cassettes illustrates the tremendous lack of accessible knowledge about this cultural heritage. Thus there is a need for a register or a catalogue of cassette albums produced in African countries.

This project is the attempt to fill this gap with the creation of a cassettography of African Music Albums. Although I had followed the idea to start this kind of catalogue for a couple of years this project just started two months ago, thanks to the support of the African Music Archives at the University of Mainz. Currently the cassettography is in a test phase where ideas and implementation are being tested. The cassette albums used in the project are found in a private collection or in the AMA at Mainz.

At this stage the cassettography contains entries on cassette albums from 24 countries, biographical entire on the artists and bands who appear on the cassettes, entries on authors and composers of songs, as well as entries on the companies which produced and released the cassettes (such as music labels, music shops, etc.). The data in the entries is based on information provided on the cover of or on the cassettes themselves as well as from publications in the internet (online magazines, newspapers, etc.) and printed books.

The project is using open sources software (MediaWiki) in order to be sustainable in the long term. Albums are continuously added to the cassettography, more or less on a daily base and descriptive and documentation texts will be continuously revised and amended as well.

Please note that this is an academic non-profit project. Comments that contribute to the improvement and enrichment of this project are very welcome. An email address will soon be added.

Recent addition s

Please note that the pictures are linked to the covers only. The cassette is linked to via the title below the picture.

Cassettes arranged by country

A

 Cassettes from Algeria

C

 Cassettes from Cameroon
Cassettes from Congo


D

 Cassettes from DRC/Zaïre

E

 Cassettes from Ethiopia
Cassettes from Eritrea

G

 Cassettes from Gabon
Cassettes from Ghana
Cassettes from Guinea

I

 Cassettes from Ivory Coast


K

 Cassettes from Kenya

L

 Cassettes from Liberia

M

 Cassettes from Madagascar
Cassettes from Mali
Cassettes from Morocco

N

 Cassettes from Nigeria

S

 Cassettes from São Tomé and Príncipe
Cassettes from Senegal
Cassettes from South Africa
Cassettes from Sudan

T

 Cassettes from Tanzania
Cassettes from Togo
Cassettes from Tunisia

U

 Cassettes from Uganda


Z

 Cassettes from Zimbabwe



AMA - African Music Archive

The African Music Archive at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz is collecting modern African music and makes it available to science and research. It hosts music on all kinds of media: shellac and vinyl records, as well as audio and video cassettes, CDs and DVDs. It currently hosts a unique collection of 15,000 sound recordings from the 1940s until the present. Beyond academic work, AMA seeks to make knowledge about African music accessible to a broader public.

'African Cassettes' is maintained by Andreas Wetter.

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