Figure 4: The Gallo Record Archive vault, (Lambrechts, 2012)
Magazines include Car Magazine, Getaway, Popular Mechanics, Wine, Financial Mail, Elle, Elle Decoration, Home Owner and Longevity. Avusa furthermore controls Exclusive Books, Van Schaiks retailers, five major publishing companies and distributing licences including Random House, Struik, Struik Christian Books, Zebra and Umuzi. It also owns Nu Metro and licences from Hollywood and Bollywood, as well as distribution and retail licences of 20th Century Fox, Disney, Warner, the BBC and Universal (Avusa, Corporate Overview, 2011).
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The Gallo archive was established in 1990 during a vital turning point in South Africa’s history, a time when the focus was on transformation and the heritage sector started to look at ways to represent the “new” nation (see for instance Hamilton et al., 2002). During this time, Geoff Paynter, the head of Gallo Africa’s publishing division, realised the
commercial value that an archive such as Gallo could have and effectively created a post for Rob Allingham within the publishing company as the Gallo archivist in 1990 (Allingham, RA 30/07/2011). However, establishing the archive as a functional department was difficult.18 Within the Gallo Music Group there were three separate and competing record companies that held their own master copies: RPM (with connections to Virgin and MCA), the
Gramophone Record Company (who had a 50% joint-venture company with CBS) and Teal- Trutone (who had a 50% joint-venture company with Polygram) (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012; see also Allen, 2007:268). None of these companies were remotely interested in the idea of starting a Gallo Record Archive. Only Geoff Paynter, who ran the music publishing company, believed in the value of the archive. Allingham (RA 04/02/2012) notes: “The three record companies just thought this was the stupidest idea. They practically called it ‘Paynter’s folly’”.
Paynter eventually managed to convince the company of his vision and the archival post was created within the publishing division. Allingham points out that two of the main reasons for situating the archive within the publishing division (which was concerned with composers and not with records) was that Geoff Paynter was the only one of the executives who was interested in the idea. Secondly, each of the three competing record companies had to be serviced equally and it was therefore decided that an independent entity was to house the archive (Allingham, 2012a)
One of Allingham’s first big tasks was to design a storage facility for the master tape collection. These masters used to be stored at the vinyl pressing facility at Steeledale, Johannesburg, which was closed down in 1992 and eventually sub-let to a new tenant (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012; Allingham, 2012a). The management’s hand was forced when
18
Before the archive was created officially, there was a vault that contained all of Gallo’s masters. However, the archive was not a functional division before the post of archivist was created for Allingham in 1990.
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the new tenant demanded the removal of the tapes from the premises and Allingham was given the task of designing a storage facility. Subsequently a state-of-the art storage facility based on international standards and specifications derived from master tape archives around the world, with exact temperature and humidity control mechanisms, steel shelving and fire-proof measures and facilities, was built in 1994 (Allingham, 2012; Allingham, 2012a). The master tapes were moved there in 1995 (Allen, 2007:271). However, due to internal company politics, this archival storage facility was torn down a few years later.
This puzzling turn of events came about after Johnnic Entertainment announced a restructuring plan in 2001 to try and curb financial losses (Johnnic Entertainment
Restructuring Announcement, 2001). Accordingly, the company was split into two
competing sections, namely “the businesses that focus on content and those that support its distribution” (Ibid.). The content providers included Gallo Record Company and Gallo Music Publishers and the support providers (which included Manufacturing, Distribution, Warehousing, Debtors, and Royalty Administration) were renamed as Entertainment Logistics Services (ELS) (Ibid.; Allingham, 2012a). This arrangement broke up the vertical structure of Gallo whereby every stage of the record producing process was either directly owned by Gallo or controlled by Gallo ranging from studio recording and pressing, to distribution and marketing (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012). Due to the restructuring, the vault that Allingham designed – originally built on a Gallo-owned premise, now belongs to ELS, “who’s business decisions were no longer in concert with Gallo’s interest” (Ibid.). ELS subsequently tore down the vault to extend their warehouse and the material was moved to what used to be the old cassette plant (Ibid.). Although there is some degree of humidity control, no fire proofing or fire prevention strategies are in place.19 The current storage of the vault is still located on ELS premises, who are now demanding that the material be moved somewhere else (Ibid.). In order to deal with this development, Gallo is looking to digitise their holdings and get rid of the masters in order to save on storage space and fees. The primary concern is thus not archival, i.e. digitising intended to improve accessibility or preserve material more effectively for the future, but commercial. Allingham, who was
19
This would include, for example, locating the archive 20 meters from the closest wall so that in case the warehouse were to burn down, the archival material would be safe (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012).
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subsequently re-hired in March 2012 to oversee this project, has estimated that he can reduce the volume of the Gallo vault by at least 50% by getting rid of all the foreign copy- masters that were sent to South Africa to press records locally that were issued overseas (Allingham, 2012). Although the company would just have these masters discarded, Allingham has suggested that through an auditing process, the records be sent to the national archive (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012).
As a recording company, Gallo is not primarily interested in conservation, but functions as a commercial enterprise driven by musical hits and big turnover. Within this environment, the Gallo Record Archive was not established to preserve or make its material accessible, but to commercially exploit the Gallo catalogue and legacy (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012). In creating this archive during the country’s transitional period to democracy, Gallo believed that the “music of the past would be recognised and valued by the country’s new citizens, and would therefore be bought by them” (Allen, 2008:32). As Allen (2008:32) points out, the archive’s function was thus “to convert the cultural and symbolic capital inherent in its holdings into economic capital”. However, the re-issues from Gallo’s archive sold very modestly, and for the first couple of years it lost money before it started to break even (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012). Nevertheless, the archive gradually started to generate an income through licensing of archive masters to companies outside of Gallo who wished to make compilation albums (Allingham, 2012a).
However, after 1994, sales started to increase, especially “the sales of older Afrikaans- audience music began to take off” and “the Gallo Record Company became increasingly agitated about how the Archive was licensing ‘our’ music to their competitors” (Allingham, 2012a). When management found out that other companies were making money from their material, a clampdown was enforced on Allingham’s activities, preventing him from giving licences to any third parties as well as severely restricting the re-issue of material. The result of this was a period of six years during which almost no re-issues were produced from the Gallo Record Archive (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012). This situation changed in 2005 when new management was appointed who saw some value in re-issuing Gallo’s catalogue. This
resulted in the re-release of over 100 albums in two years (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012; Allen, 2007:272).
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Apart from the re-issue of material, Allingham took it upon himself to identify and fully annotate and catalogue the masters in the vault. Many of these were unmarked or
contained only patchy details regarding content or production history. However, finding all of these details were complicated by various factors such as the non-delivery of assets by the record companies Gallo acquired, the disposal of valuable material relating to the recordings as well as by haphazard archival techniques. Allingham (RA 04/02/2012) notes:
When a master was sent from overseas, all of the details were there, but when it came to a local master, if the engineer was feeling a little lazy that day, or the assistant wasn’t keen, the details just weren’t written *…+ because we have it on a card index system somewhere.
However, parts of the initial card index system were thrown away when the Record
Company moved in 1989 to the newly built Gallo Centre in Rosebank. During the relocation, a storeroom where all Gallo’s records, original photographs, studio log-books, statutory notices, the index card system etc. were kept had to be cleaned out. Allingham (RA
04/02/2012) recounts that an employee was charged with deciding what to keep and what to throw away: “He basically threw out just about everything – he was one of those guys who walked around saying ‘63 cents per square meter, that’s what it costs’ and so it all went!”20 Without these statutory notes and the studio logbooks it has become very difficult to identify the unmarked masters in the Gallo vault. Most of these masters have no other information attached to them except for a master number. Allingham points out that there is a large quantity of unidentified masters that can only be identified through finding the records and using the catalogue number on the record to try and find the master tape (Ibid).
In some cases, recordings produced by Gallo are extremely difficult to find. The records sold in the regional markets during the 1950s, for example, are particularly hard to come by.21 Allingham notes (RA 04/02/2012) that within these markets, for instance, “Xhosa material
20
Allingham (RA 04/02/2012) notes that after the move, what was left of Gallo’s paper archive is still a mess, with large amounts of material either having been taken by employees or thrown away. 21
Ballantine similarly notes that Gallo “does not possess an archival collection of the thousands of records of urban black popular music the company produced or sold before the 1950s” (Ballantine, 1993:3).
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would only be sold in the Transkei, or Shangaan material would only be sold north of
Pietersburg”. All these masters are in Gallo, but Allingham (Ibid.) points out that it is virtually impossible to identify them or to know where they are, since there is no catalogue and the material was never advertised. Unfortunately Gallo never kept a library of its records, a decision that would have facilitated this process greatly. Gallo’s library was only established in 2004 (Allen, 2007:270). Even in rare cases where record companies bought by Gallo had record libraries, these did not always end up in the Gallo vault. A case in point is the Teal Record Company. Geoff Paynter, who worked for Teal in the 1970s before he joined Gallo, built up a library of every local and international LP the company had released during his time there. However, when Gallo bought Teal in 1976, the LP library was not delivered as part of the assets because it had been sold to the Hillbrow Record Library to make up for lost revenue during a bad quarter (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012).22 In addition to not actively keeping a library, Gallo never kept record of the album sleeves of the records it released, and some original sleeves of albums are nearly impossible to find (Ibid.).
During all of Gallo’s acquisitions and mergers with other companies, non-delivery of assets substantially influenced the contents of the current archive. When Gallo bought Troubadour in 1969 for example, less than a dozen of their masters arrived at Gallo out of a catalogue of more than 200 Afrikaans LP’s and 3000 African singles (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012). Allen (2007:270) points out that apart from the 1300 African singles and 30 Afrikaans records owned by Allingham and the 50 records at the SABC, “there is no way of telling what more than 50% of the Troubadour catalogue consisted of.” The back catalogue of Teal Records, one of EMI’s local subsidiaries before it merged with Gallo in 1976, was also severely damaged during a fire at the EMI storage facility in 1973 where all the masters recorded by EMI and Teal from 1956 to 1972 were kept (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012; Allingham, 2012a). There is thus a significant quantity of intellectual property owned by Gallo that is not backed up by masters or by library copies of the published records, “a huge amount of stuff that Gallo owns but doesn’t have access to” (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012).
22
According to Allen (2007:271) the Teal library contained thousands of LPs, some of which are almost impossible to find today.
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At present, masters are still being added to the archive and every record that is released by Gallo, locally or internationally, is catalogued and shelved after it comes back from the production plant according to the system that Allingham set in place. Allingham (RA 04/02/2012) notes that keeping masters is becoming less of a necessity in the digital era where you can use a production DVD as a primary source.However, during the time when analogues were still used, most record companies kept their masters, either in “master stores” or archives (Allingham, RA 04/02/2012).