RetroAfric's online debut!

The Big News for us at RetroAfric is the fact that you are reading this newsletter online at our newly introduced website. This will be a frequently updated page containing news about our releases, music publishing and other activities relating to RetroAfric, the artistes we represent and anything else pertaining to the Glory Days of African Music.

As you navigate the pages of the site, designed and constructed by Simon Underwood of usurp.co.uk, you will find out plenty about our catalogue and the important musicians we have released. A kind of mission statement can be found on the label info pages.

As we settle in to our new virtual home we will be adding features and making the site more interactive. Eventually we intend to offer a complete online sales service but first we will concentrate on content. Our extensive picture library is being catalogued and you will soon be able to browse a sample of low res scans of musicians from all over Africa. We will also offer downloadable chapters from books on African music, starting with the Franco biography, Congo Colossus. A message board will be established and a series of links to relevant sites will be set up.

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Coming soon

We at RetroAfric are aware that more than a year has passed since our last release, which was itself an update of our second ever production. We may have been slow as usual, but we have not been idle. Without giving too much away, we can inform Retro listeners that we now have six albums signed and paid for from a variety of well-known artistes from different countries and eras. We intend to release two or three CDs during the first half of 2001.

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Fundi Konde: another star is dimmed

A continuing and expected problem with a label such as ours is that our veteran artistes are by definition approaching the end of their days. Each passing is an intensely sad event, and earlier in 2000 we mourned the loss of Fundi Konde, a lovely man and a supremely important musician whose influence on East African music had almost been overlooked, certainly in the West.

The Guardian newspaper provided some belated acknowledgement of this all-round musician by publishing his obituary, which can be read in full at www.Retroafric.com/html/sl_notes/08cd_3.html

For those who have been trying to obtain the Fundi Konde release Retropsective (RETRO8CD) we apologise. Production problems occured when our suppliers moved their pressing plant and items were mislaid. We hope that copies will be back in the shops sometime in the New Year.

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