The CK7 label. Quality and authenticity from Mali

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I’ve been interested in indie record labels since I started buying records. That interest continued when I started buying different kids of West African music and, as with R&B and jazz, I found that following particular labels would lead me to great music I’d never otherwise find out about. CK7 is one such label.

I first came across it in 1993 when, on my first trip to West Africa, I bought an album by Sali Sidibe, (whose first eponymous album for Syllart I already had). This, ‘N’daya international’ (CK7 003) had CK7’s address in Paris, on the sleeve. The following year, armed with this address – 45 Rue Marcadet, Paris 18 – I went to Paris and found the shop, which is still open and still doing great business.

I expected to find a tiny office in maybe a shop front. I didn’t expect a dry goods store/grocery! The place was choc-a-bloc with cans of coffee, oil lamps, lamp oil, batteries, torches, powdered milk, cans of beans etc and, most important of all, boxes and boxes of kola nuts, with a continuous stream of shoppers buying them. Kola nuts are such an important item for the firm that the trademark is CK7 spelled out in kola nuts.

Oh yes, there were K7s a-plenty and VHS videos. There was one being shown in the shop; “Sa kunu sa’ (CK7 094) by Kandia Kouyate, who was singing (apparently) while sitting on the back of an ox, being carried through town, and of whom I’d never heard at the time. I had a whale of a time there and bought lots of stuff. I also talked to Kalle Camara for a while. He told me that he had started the firm in 1988 or 1989 (can’t remember which) and that his mission was to spread the music of Mali as widely as he could. He also issued recordings by people from other countries in the region, usually licensed from other companies. He normally picked artists singing in languages that were common in Mali, which Malian audiences appreciated; for example the Senegalese Peul band Super Diamono and the lead singer of the Senegalese Soninke band Sooninkara.

Strangely, with his mission statement, Kalle Camara dealt with no one in the west. NO ONE. Not even with Nick Dean, my man in Sussex who sold practically everything that came out anywhere in Africa. But Kalle Camara was making a lot of albums. On my first visit, I bought a 2 K7 set by Ganda Fadiga from 1992 which were CK7 120/121. So, in four years, he’d issued 120 odd albums.

Over the years, I kept returning to the shop on Rue Marcadet and never was disappointed with the music I bought there. And Kalle Camara’s business expanded; by 1999, he had three addresses in France and one in Mali listed on his K7s (and his catalogue numbers had reached CK7 426. By 2004, he was up to CK7 976.

What’s prompted me to write about CK7 is that Camara has changed his policy about not dealing with people in the West. With increasing popularity of CDs in West Africa, he is reissuing some of his early material on CD and most of his albums seem now to be issued on both K7 and CD (the K7 sleeves have been stretched laterally for CD sleeves, giving a most peculiar appearance to the singers). One consequence of this is that many of his albums are now available as downloads from Amazon. They’re usually five or six pounds from Amazon UK; sometimes you get a better deal from Amazon France, but sometimes a worse deal J Prices seem a bit better at Amazon USA. Anyway, these are cheap enough for you to do a bit of experimentation.

He’s still issuing the occasional album from Guinean artists: both Sekouba Bambino and Kerfala Kante have recorded for him in the past few years. The Sekouba Bambino doesn’t seem to be available on CD or download (I only got it on K7, on my last visit).

Authenticity, to me, means appreciated by and intended for the contemporaneous audience in the place where the music lives. In Malian terms, that means for Bambara music, the Segou region, for Wassoulou, south West Mali, for Soninke music, all over Sahelian West Africa, as the Soninke dispersed widely after their empire was defeated by the Almoravids in 1077. That means that, to me, it’s OK for Ganda Fadiga to include an organist in one of his albums, or for others to include drum machines (though this is rare in his Malian productions). Your mileage might vary on this, however

I'd recommend as a starter, this set by the greatest traditional Soninke musician, Ganda Fadiga.

MG

[JSngry]

So, this guy not dealing with the Western market strictly as a matter of principle? Did he ever elaborate on that? Was it economic, political, spiritual, what, exactly?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I never asked him. It wasn't until a couple of years afterwards that I realised that no one had his stuff and that the only places to get it outside West Africa were Paris or Brussels (there's an African shop there that used to have a bit of his material in the days when I went there frequently for work; though the shop was mainly geared to the Congolese market, so there was never very much).

The feeling I got from him was that he was well geared up to exporting K7s to West Africa; at the time he had them duplicated in southern Italy very cheaply for export to Africa, where they sold at approx. a pound ($1.60 now, but possibly $2 back in the day). They sell at 2 Euro in his Paris shop now. CDs 10 Euro. Definitely cheaper on DL and no worries about the lack of sleeve notes from Amazon - there was very rarely a sleeve note anyway, generally only when he licensed material from other labels (and personnel only, which is not uninteresting to me).

The thing is, he's issued well over a thousand albums (I don't understand his CD numbers) and has been making money at these prices for twenty-five years, so he obviously understands the market - both musically and industrially - very well indeed. Personally, I don't think he could have made much money out of the western market; organisations like Sterns and World Circuit seem to understand that the western market is mainly composed of people who want something that they can dance their brains out to, that represents 'cross-cultural' meetings, or that seems (but isn't necessarily) authentic, in the terms I put it earlier. CK7 doesn't do that material, and he may have realised he wouldn't make money on it. But the Amazon download route probably doesn't cost him anything very much, so a few sales will be more or less free money to him.

MG

[JSngry]

Sounds like he knew what he had withhis business and saw no reason to go giving it away (in whole or in part, temporarily or permanently) under the notion of "expansion".

Smart guy.

And that sounds like a hugeass catalog...you'd almost have to live it in real time to hear all of it with any real sense of what was going on...but that's true of most things, I suppose.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Yes, it's a very large catalogue. He seems to have two new series' going on CDs (as well as reissues that carry the original K7 numbers up to 1092 in 2007 in my collection) - a 3000 series (I have 3064 & 3065 from 2008) and a 4000 series (I have 4289 from 2011). To me, that looks like over 1400 albums in about 23 years. I've bought 39 of his own productions and possibly a dozen licensed from elsewhere; a tiny sample. Some of it I've bought at random, just looking at sleeves to get a vibe off them, y'know; never been disappointed. But a good number are by people whose work I already knew from their recordings with other labels: I don't think he deals with unknowns, just people unknown to me But at the price of a K7, I've bought a lot of stuff I knew nothing about, from all companies (and there are many in Sahelian West Africa; many more than in the former British colonies), not just CK7.

But when you think of this huge catalogue, you can understand why some people come on the board and say stuff like Blue Note - where to start?

MG

[kh1958]

I would give the label a try, but I couldn't find any CDs on Amazon UK or France, only some downloads on the French amazon.

[John L]

Thanks, MG! I am dowloading the Ganda Fadiga. Please keep the recs coming!

[mjzee]

I would give the label a try, but I couldn't find any CDs on Amazon UK or France, only some downloads on the French amazon.

I did a search on US Amazon for Ganda Fadiga, and came up with many, including the two TMG recommended:

1992 Vol. 1

1992 Vol. 2

I listened to some of the samples, and cannot relate.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I would give the label a try, but I couldn't find any CDs on Amazon UK or France, only some downloads on the French amazon.

I did a search on US Amazon for Ganda Fadiga, and came up with many, including the two TMG recommended:

1992 Vol. 1

1992 Vol. 2

I listened to some of the samples, and cannot relate.

It's not easy. Ganda Fadiga is mainly a praise singer, (more of a praise talker, actually), praising his patrons, after whom the tracks are named. There are also political moans and groans in there. That's about what he does. If you're looking for actual singing, Njarou, his first for CK7, features his wife Hawa Drame, one of the most revered vocalists in Mali. That's on either France or US Amazon.

MG

I would give the label a try, but I couldn't find any CDs on Amazon UK or France, only some downloads on the French amazon.

No, there aren't any CDs. CDs you have to go to Paris or Brussels for. They cost money to make and sell, so he doesn't do that for western audiences because there isn't enough demand. Downloads is the only way he deals with the west, presumably because it's profitable on even low sales.

MG

[kh1958]

So I want to go to Paris to buy African music CDs. That's normal, isn't it?

[JSngry]

So I want to go to Paris to buy African music CDs. That's normal, isn't it?

Seems to be a roundabout synergy to that idea, yeah...

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

So I want to go to Paris to buy African music CDs. That's normal, isn't it?

Well, if you're headed for Europe anyway, you can get lots of stuff not available elsewhere.

Sterns in London used to be good for Nigerian and Ghanaian LPs but only a bit from Francophone Africa outside Congo; but no more.

MG

[David Ayers]

Fascinating topic - thanks for sharing.