Hidden Years Audio Visual Digitisation Project

Digitising the David Marks and 3rd Ear Music Company material is an ongoing process. Our current digitisation project focuses on the 4000 reel-to-reel tapes and 6000 cassette tapes that form part of the Hidden Years collection. These recordings not only provide valuable information about music, festivals and events during the 1960s-1990s, but also contextual information about where and when they took place. Due to David Marks’s recording technique of “just letting the tape run” the recordings contain announcements, jokes and political statements made by musicians and organisers of events.

The sound recordings also include various plays and musicals performed in theatres known for their radical political productions such as the Market Theatre, Dorkay House and the Bantu Men’s Social Club in Johannesburg.

Some of the musiciansrepresented in this collection includes the maskandi guitarist Shiyani Ngcobo, the Xhosa mounthbow player Madosini, early performances of Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu (who later formed the famous group Juluka), various folk singers including Phil Ochs, Jeremy Taylor, Colin Shamley and Mike Dickman, protest musicians such as Roger Lucey and Hugh Masekela, jazz musicians Carlo Mombeli, Afrikaans singer/songwriters Laurika Rauch, Koos Kombuis and Anton Goosen, and performances of Lefifi Tladi, the Malombo Jazz Makers, Allen Kwela, Kippie Moeketsi and Cornelia Blundell, to name but a few.

Project Leader: Mrs Pakama Ncume, Sound-Archivist Africa Open Institute

Duration: 2017-