Computers, culture and music: the history of the recording industry in Malawi

Abstract

This paper traces the history of the music recording industry in Malawi which had no indigenous recording industry until the formation of the Nzeru Record Company (NRC) in 1968. Prior to that, recordings were made, first by mobile recording studios, followed by the Federal Broadcasting Studios in Lusaka and then at the national Radio Malawi (later Malawi Broadcasting Corporation) studios. Between the demise of NRC, in 1972, and 1989 musicians again largely depended on the MBC for recording facilities, a fact that, given the censorship of the one party era, helped to shape the music and its lyrical content. In the early 1980s, there was a conjunction between the IMF-inspired privatisation imperatives and the independent mission-owned Baptist Media Centre and other studios beginning to rent out their studios. The establishment of the Copyright Act of 1988 and the liberalisation of the political economy in the early 1990s were crucial to the establishment of a recording industry enabling entrepreneurs to form their own studios. The advent of multiparty rule in 1994 (which had itself been facilitated by the political use of information technologies, like fax machines, PC based internet and publishing to subvert the one party state censorship) further liberated the recording environment, although distribution remained a preserve of shopkeepers. Despite this, producers and musicians found themselves hamstrung by the limited lack of alternative cassette and compact disc presses and distribution channels. Influenced by regional recording industries in South, East and West Africa, as well as socio-political events, musicians and entrepreneurs turned to computer-based digital recording studios towards the end of the 1990's and small independent music studios mushroomed in towns like Blantyre, Balaka and Lilongwe as well as trading centres like Lunzu. This paper further briefly looks at the effects of this use of computer recording on the quality, quantity and nature, in terms of the rhythm, syncopation and quality of music produced as well as the historical legacy.