Jonathan Ward’s ‘Opika Pende’ box set resurrects the world of early African music — with a history lesson in the mix.

A bowed guitar player accompanying a Barbarba dance, TimbuKtu, Mali.

Imagine the sounds and melodies of Africa in the early 1900s. Then imagine them filling the speakers in your home – the familiar hiss and crackle of an old record, a female voice croons while a high-lonesome stringed instrument meanders along. It’s profoundly moving, resurrecting long-buried voices within its crackling grooves and haunting, soulful rhythms.

Now you can do more than just imagine – you can hear them in the flesh.

Compiled by folk music afficianado, Jonathan Ward, “Opika Pende: Africa at 78 RPM,” is a four-disc, 100-song collection and companion book of never before compiled regional African music from the early 1900s through the ’60s. Much of it is culled from fragile original shellac recordings that have miraculously survived a journey across space and times.

Jonathan Ward is collector of folkloric and vernacular music recordings of from around the world. In 2011, he created the ‘Africa at 78 RPM compilation with one simple goal in mind: to showcase a diverse amount of long-forgotten music from Africa that transports him as a listener. It is one person’s offering of music that is wholly unavailable except in its original elusive and fragile format.

‘While it is not definitive, nor am I attempting to construct or invent a narrative, there are important connections to be made.’ says Jonathan. ‘As a non-African, I offer this set as an example of the riches that lay in waiting when considering the tens of thousands of phenomenal African 78 rpm discs that were issued, played, dispersed, and in large part, forgotten.’

On the introduction to the box set, Jonathan says: ‘It is truly astonishing to consider the tremendous variety of music that was pressed to shellac discs on the continent of Africa. Popular songs, topical songs, work songs, comic songs, songs of worship, ritual, dance, and praise—the sheer range of musical styles resists any easy categorization. Further, African geography itself resists boundaries. The boundaries of cultures and languages are often far more complex than political boundaries. Complicating things further, entire countries seem to have been skipped over by both commercial 78 rpm record companies and ethnographers during the 78 rpm era. No doubt it was the same with many cultures. But that doesn’t mean that 78s weren’t everywhere, even in remote parts of the continent. By the mid-1960s, 78s were still a popular if not preferred medium in much of Africa, as a significant amount of the population still used wind-up gramophone players.’

Ward has helped spark interest in this and other early African music through his website, Excavated Shellac, which since 2007 has offered downloads of antiquated African music, some of the oldest ever captured,  from throughout the continent.

His goal was to reveal information not only about the artists but the time period, combine it into a package that would perhaps “affect the way people listen to the music. There’s really a transporting effect when you hear them,” says Ward, whose day job is as researcher/editor at the Getty Research Center. “Not only are they musically captivating at their best, when you can really hear something that brings you to a jolt, but they’re so laden with history, both as a piece of music but also as an information carrier.