G.V. Series

The G.V. Series (perhaps for Grabation Victor) were a series of 10 inch 78 rpm Gramophone records produced in Europe and the United States from 1933 to 1958, and exported (or repressed on site) to colonial Tropical Africa. They are credited with introducing Afro-Cuban music into modern African popular culture. The resulting re-interpretations influenced the creation of several genres of African popular music.

Over 250 titles (double sided records) were produced in the G.V. Series. The records were launched by the British EMI company's His Master's Voice label in 1933, in part because of shrinking demand during the Great Depression. In the 1940s, HMV reached agreement with other companies, such as RCA Victor to share the royalties of their artists in the production of G.V. Series recordings. Thereafter local distributors were able to request, or press themselves, any of the back catalog of these companies for relatively low cost in Africa, making the records affordable to African listeners for the first time.

At the same time in West Africa (what became Nigeria and Ghana, specifically) EMI was recording and releasing Sakara, Juju and Apala music on 78rpm discs in the Parlophone B, HMV JL, HMV JZ and Decca WA/GWA/NGA series (1947–52), as well as HMV owned local labels, such as Ghana's Taymani Special. While there were also domestic record producers beginning to appear in Anglophone West Africa, Francophone Central African music was based on the twin poles of small domestic labels of the 1940s and 50s, and the Latin music supplied by the G.V. Series records and later competitors from Pathé Marconi and Decca. Anglophone West Africa also had twin advantages of having had access to domestic recording and the distribution across West Africa of these recordings by the HMV owned Zonophone label of African music from 1928.

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