Its Hit Parade Africain discs were perhaps the earliest anthologies of popular African music released in Europe. This was another series I began to collect seriously as it contained my "soul" music: Congolese pop of the sixties and seventies. The lack of recording information, beyond titles and composers of songs and occasionally licensing, frustrates any attempts at scholarship but foregrounds the music, which is consistently great. The attitude of the label was very much like that seen in the "Colonie Belge" genre of Congolese paintings which showed the superior whites treating the Africans like wayward children, humiliating and punishing them.
In Congo in I heard many stories like that from a porter climbing Mount Virunga, the third highest mountain in Africa. When we got to the base camp for the summit we found iron beds in the hut. He told me that he had helped to carry them up as a lad, and was threatened with severe beatings if he dropped anything. This brutal attitude even permeates the music where the series was concerned. A fragile and rare treasure of the world's music was bungled, mishandled and tossed off by the French publishers.
Clearly they didn't give un crotte. This deal was set up by Grand Kalle -- where Fonior paid for and held the recordings, but granted Kalle license for release in Congo under his own editions label 'Surboum AJ.
By Fonior by then semi-independent of Decca were distributing Congolese records on many smaller Congolese labels Editions Boboto, Paka Siye, etc and these later became the mainstay of the early African 45T catalogue being repressed and re-issued as the 90xxxx 45T series from around ish on.
These re-issues were primarily made for European-Francophone markets and African non-Congo distribution. The series of LP releases began to appear from around the first ten releases only -- with the series beginning properly from around , and were either LP's licensed directly from Congolese labels see Izeidi below or were compiled in later releases from previously licensed 45Ts taken from the labels 90 series.
