Legendary label World Circuit Records has established its reputation by producing some of the finest world music albums of the past two decades, specialising in music from Cuba and West Africa. This is a small selection of the variety of tracks you can hear from the label.

Read the interview with Dave McGuire at World Circuit to learn more about the label.

When was World Circuit Records founded and what does it bring to the table?

Anne Hunt and Mary Farquharson were running a touring organisation called Arts Worldwide which brought musicians to the U.K. who were popular locally but little known to a wider public. Many concert goers would ask for records at the shows and at that time there were none available. So they decided to set up a record company to bring this music from a local circuit to the world circuit. The one pre-requisite for a World Circuit artist was musical excellence.

In 1986 the label released its first albums, Venezuelan Maria Rodriguez’s ‘La Tremenda’ and Abdel Gadir Salim’s ‘Sounds of Sudan Volume One’. The founders soon realised they would need someone to run the label and at this point Nick Gold, an African history student and avid record collector joined the label. The trio soon consolidated their vision of artistic excellence, a commitment to the artists and to ensure that they had the best possible production, packaging, promotion and marketing. Their philosophy was to be an ‘artist led’ label with all aspects of each release tailored to the particular artist. Twenty two years later, this is still key to how World Circuit operate.

What projects are you currently working on?

We are working on the new album by the great Malian singer Oumou Sangare which should be released in February. For those that don’t know her, Oumou is one of the greatest singers in Africa and a hugely important figure in Malian culture, politics and business.

There is also the possibility of World Circuit doing something with the legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen, so keep an eye out for that!

What criteria do you consider when signing an artist?

World Circuit are in the fortunate position that we can cherry pick the very best artists out there. I can assume that for Nick the two main things are that the artist is producing material of the highest quality and that there is scope for them to grow as an artist with World Circuit; i.e. that an album on our label isn’t just a carbon copy of something they’ve done for someone else. We are a small dedicated team who are involved in every aspect of our releases so they really need to be projects that we care for and believe in.

5 essential World Circuit albums?

Buena Vista Social Club

Ali Farka Toure ‘Savane’

Orchestra Baobab ‘Pirates Choice’

Orlando Cachaito Lopez ‘Cachaito’

Oumou Sangare ‘Oumou’

African music has been making more and more noise on other continents, how do you see its worldwide impact progress over the next couple of years?

The trend has always been for a particular country, genre, etc to be in vogue for a while and be absolutely everywhere for a while, then calm down and be replaced by something else. World Circuit experienced this with the Buena Vista boom in the 1990s, and although their hasn’t been a release of that magnitude it does seem that African music is currently enjoying that status. What is important is that the music is promoted correctly and not just seen as a phase in fashion, and that it seeps into everyday culture such as previously minority genres such as reggae. I also think that the fact that African youngsters are using mainstream western styles such as hip hop and blending that with their own influences, and then spreading the word online will certainly get the music beyond the traditional middle aged, middle class demographic that buys world music.

How important is the internet for World Circuit?

The most important thing is that we produce music of the highest quality and that we are able to allow as many people as possible hear and enjoy it. Quite clearly the internet is the way in which more and more people will discover new music so we have to embrace that. World Circuit have a rather extensive label website with a huge range of music, video, visuals and text; we are launching a new Buena Vista Social Club website, we have numerous pages on MySpace, Facebook, i-like, Last.fm, YouTube and so on, and we appear to be getting a lot of people checking us out.

How do you see the internet evolve in the next few years?

This is the big question in the music industry, whilst music retail seems more and more to be in the hands of a handful of major retailers the internet appears to be going in the other direction where specialist blogs and peer recommendation sites such as Fairtilizer will be where the real music fans go to check out what’s new. Also, the material on offer on websites will improve all the time, with better quality of music and video to download and more interesting and innovative ways to access information. Equally interesting is the next generation of listeners, because of the internet kids today no longer have to save their pocket money to buy a 7 inch single, they are exposed to a much wider range of music than previous generations can imagine, and are more inclined to dip their toes into unknown waters.

Visit the World Circuit website.
Visit the World Circuit Fairtilizer profile.
Visit the World Circuit Myspace.